Individual and intergroup determinants of social representations of attitudes towards Jews during World War II

This thesis explores the role of bystanders in the Holocaust and their varying moral attitudes, including compassion, helping, indifference, refusal of help, schadenfreude, and collaboration. The study examines estimates of these attitudes among contemporary nations in Central Europe through six studies using different methods, including four correlational studies (N = 12670) and a bi-national longitudinal study (N = 2168). The findings suggest that people tend to overestimate the morality of their ingroup in the past, which is consistent with the universal strive for maintaining a positive social identity. The degree of ingroup morality bias is influenced by collective narcissism - a defensive form of social identification. The relationship between defensive identification and ingroup morality bias in representations of history is explained by beliefs related to the historical victimhood of the ingroup and secondary antisemitism. The longitudinal study indicates that secondary antisemitism, which is a belief that serves to exonerate the ingroup from collective guilt related to the Holocaust, fuels more biased representations of history, thus confirming our hypothesis that this belief is the closest antecedent of defensive representations of the past. The study also finds that biased representations of the past are not only influenced by beliefs related to intergroup relations but also by individual judgments regarding the self. The study found that individuals tend to view themselves as moral and see their ingroup as similarly moral, which can lead to biased representations of their ingroup's morality in the past. Overall, our studies are the first ones to show that biased representations of history can be explained not only by defensive motives related to social identity but also by individual judgments regarding the self.