Emotional Reactions to Intergroup Norm Violations

Abstract

The present study investigates emotional reactions that follow norm violations involving Hindus and Muslims in India. It also studies how in-group’s emotional reaction is predicted by the emotion that the group experiences in tandem with certain contextual factors, such as, fraternal relative deprivation (FRD), social identity, power to harm and resource power. Data were collected on 221 Hindus and 167 Muslims. Three different types of norm-violating situations were presented and subjects were asked to rate the extent to which they and their group will experience anger, fear or anxiety in such situations. Respondents were asked to choose between conciliation, retaliation and retribution as one of their preferred emotional reactions. Although, conciliation was the most preferred reaction for resolving conflicts for both, Hindus and Muslims, this preference changed from one situation to another. Across three situations, anger was the most intensely experienced emotion followed by the emotions of anxiety and fear. Anger evoked retaliatory reactions among Hindus while Muslims preferred a retributory reaction in situations involving strong norm violations. Multinomial logistic analysis showed that no emotion was consistently related with the preferred emotional reaction to norm violations across situations. For Hindus, fear in Situation 1 (personal humiliation of a group member) was associated with preference for retribution but with conciliation in Situation 3 (mocking of Gods and Goddesses). Similarly, anger enhanced the odds of Hindus for engaging in retaliation in Situation 2 (obstruction of in-group’s religious procession). As for Muslims, contextual factors, such as, resource power, power to harm in association with different negative emotions increased the odds for their preferred choices of emotional reaction.