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ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6049-6851

Access Type

Open Access Thesis

Document Type

thesis

Degree Program

Psychology

Degree Type

Master of Science (M.S.)

Year Degree Awarded

2019

Month Degree Awarded

May

Abstract

Members of groups in conflict are often defensive of ingroup-perpetrated violence, especially if they glorify their ingroup. While past literature has established that high glorifiers are unconditionally defensive of their ingroup, findings regarding low glorifiers are mixed, with some studies finding low glorifiers to be similarly defensive as high glorifiers and others finding low glorifiers to not be defensive or even critical of the ingroup. Across six studies, I investigated whether perceiving a conflict to be tangible (rather than intangible) drives defensiveness among low glorifiers. I tested this hypothesis across two national contexts that were naturally closer (Israel) or farther (the U.S.) from the same conflict (the Syrian conflict). I found that Israeli low glorifiers were defensive of their ingroup, whereas American low glorifiers were not (Studies 1a/1b) and that Israelis found the conflict tangible, whereas Americans found the conflict relatively intangible (Studies 2a/2b). Across Study 3 and Study 4, I found experimental evidence that low glorifiers in Serbia (study 3) and the U.S. (study 4) are more defensive of ingroup-perpetrated violence when the conflict context is tangible than when it is relatively intangible.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/14205807

First Advisor

Bernhard Leidner

Second Advisor

Brian Lickel

Third Advisor

Jeffrey Starns

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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