0000000001195543
AUTHOR
Dennis T. Kahn
Making sense of the past to understand the present: Attributions for historical trauma predict contemporary social and political attitudes
Research indicates that the memory of collective trauma influences attitudes towards contemporary social and political issues. We suggest that the specific attributions for trauma that members of victim and perpetrator groups make provide a more nuanced understanding of this relationship. Thus, we constructed and validated a measure of attributions for the Holocaust. Then, we ran a preregistered study on representative samples in Germany ( N = 504) and Israel ( N = 469) to examine whether attributing the Holocaust to essentialist or contextual causes influences attitudes towards the immigration crisis and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Results indicated that, among Germans, attributing …
Explaining the Inexplicable: Differences in Attributions for the Holocaust in Germany, Israel, and Poland
Seventy years have passed since the Holocaust, but this cataclysmic event continues to reverberate in the present. In this research, we examine attributions about the causes of the Holocaust and the influence of such attributions on intergroup relations. Three representative surveys were conducted among Germans, Poles, and Israeli Jews to examine inter- and intragroup variations in attributions for the Holocaust and how these attributions influence intergroup attitudes. Results indicated that Germans made more external than internal attributions and were especially low in attributing an evil essence to their ancestors. Israelis and Poles mainly endorsed the obedient essence attribution and …
sj-pdf-1-gpi-10.1177_1368430221990105 ��� Supplemental material for Making sense of the past to understand the present: Attributions for historical trauma predict contemporary social and political attitudes
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-gpi-10.1177_1368430221990105 for Making sense of the past to understand the present: Attributions for historical trauma predict contemporary social and political attitudes by Gilad Hirschberger, Roland Imhoff, Dennis T. Kahn and Katja Hanke in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations