Assigning moral roles within the Second World War in Europe: National similarities, differences, and implications for group-level moral representations

Giner-Sorolla, Roger, Hilton, Denis, Erb, Hans-Peter, Durante, Federica, Flaẞbeck, Christina, Fülöp, Eva, Mari, Silvia, Petrović, Nebojša, Sekerdej, Maciej, Studzinska, Anna, and others. (2020) Assigning moral roles within the Second World War in Europe: National similarities, differences, and implications for group-level moral representations. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, . ISSN 1367-2223. E-ISSN 1467-839X. (doi:10.1111/ajsp.12450) (KAR id:84070)

PDF Author's Accepted Manuscript Language: English
Download this file (PDF/817kB)	Preview
Request a format suitable for use with assistive technology e.g. a screenreader
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12450

Abstract

The moral roles assigned to nations that took part in the Second World War cast a shadow over contemporary international politics. To understand contemporary moral beliefs about the war, we took 11 mostly student samples from 9 nations that took part in the European theater of war (total N = 1,427). We asked respondents, in free and scaled listings, to identify the war’s heroes, villains, victims, and recipients of help. Nations and individuals seen as heroes, victims and villains could be readily identified by most samples and showed both continuity and difference across nations. Most nations preferentially assigned themselves hero and victim roles, and the two were correlated positively, showing ingroup favoritism linked to victimhood. These findings show the importance of morality to contemporary views of the war and suggest further directions for studying today’s political climate in Europe and elsewhere.

Item Type:	Article
DOI/Identification number:	10.1111/ajsp.12450
Uncontrolled keywords:	Morality, history, stereotypes, World War 2, nations
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D731 World War II (1939-1945)
Divisions:	Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	Roger Giner-Sorolla
Date Deposited:	11 Nov 2020 19:22 UTC
Last Modified:	05 Nov 2024 12:50 UTC
Resource URI:	https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/84070 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Giner-Sorolla, Roger.

Creator's ORCID:	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6690-8842
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Depositors only (login required):

Altmetric

Download Statistics

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.