[CoPIn]: Collective Punishment and Intergroup Relations: How Collective Punishment Induce Ingroup Identification, Outgroup Hostility, and Counter Actions

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Kessler
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 560648167

Collective punishment is a form of punishment where a group of individuals receives negative consequences or adverse sanctions as a result of the actions or behavior of one or more members of that group. Hence, it involves punishing a group collectively for the actions of a few, even if not all members of the group see themselves as responsible for the behavior in question. In psychology limited research has addressed the antecedents and consequences of collective punishment. The present project will examine the influence of different punishment strategies on counter confrontational collective action of those who are punished to explain how group consciousness lead to aggressive reactions to the punishment through identification, hostility, and competitive victimhood. 1. We will test the influence of collective punishment on counter confrontational collective action to understand how perceived unfair punishment of the collective create vicious cycle of punishment and revenge. 2. We will examine how collective punishment increases the willingness to participate in counter confrontational collective action through heightened ingroup identification, hostility toward outgroup, and competitive victimhood to investigate social psychological process from facing with collective punishment to engaging counter confrontational collective action. 3. We will examine the impact of leaders of both sides (punished and punishers) to understand how group status of punisher and those who are punished influence the relationship between punishment and counter confrontational collective action. We hypothesize that collective punishment will increase willingness to participate in counter confrontational collective action against a collective punishing outgroup through strengthened ingroup identification, outgroup hostility, and competitive victimhood. Furthermore, we aim to go beyond the mere existence of collective punishment and test whether the characteristics of those seen to bring on collective punishment (i.e., the type of individuals within the outgroup who are the presumed cause of collective punishment) influence the tendency toward counter confrontational collective action. For example, we will examine whether the extent of counter confrontational collective action differs depending on whether collective punishment is executed by leaders of the outgroup (vs ordinary outgroup members). Moreover, we will compare the effect of collective punishment and punishment of ingroup leaders on counter confrontational collective action of ingroup. By conducting this series of studies in different societies and contexts, we aim to reveal the relationship between variables in a general manner.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants