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Promoting Helping Behaviour Across Group Boundaries Through the Restoration of the Agentic Identities of Conflicting Groups

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Intergroup Helping

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Abstract

Groups involved in conflicts characterised by mutual transgressions experience threats to both their agency (i.e. the ability to influence and exert control over outcomes) and moral image. However, the motivation of conflicting group members to restore their agency translates into greater vengeful, antisocial behaviour against their outgroup, whereas their motivation to restore morality fails to correspondingly translate into greater helping behaviour—reflecting “a primacy of agency” effect. The research presented in this chapter reveals that affirming the agency of their ingroup (i.e. reassuring its competence and self-determination), allows the need for morality of the conflicting group members to come to the fore, leading to greater helpfulness towards the outgroup, despite the conflict. Across various contexts of conflict, e.g. between Switzerland and the EU, minimal groups, Jews and Palestinians, and Israeli rightists and leftists, agency affirmation increased prosocial tendencies and helping behaviour towards the conflicting outgroup. This effect was mediated through greater willingness to relinquish some power for the sake of moral concerns. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for understanding cross-group helping behaviour.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Guilford Glazer Faculty of Business and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, 8410501, Israel

    Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli

  2. School of Psychological Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, Tel-Aviv, 6997801, Israel

    Nurit Shnabel

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  1. Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli
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  2. Nurit Shnabel
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Correspondence to Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Organisational Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Esther van Leeuwen

  2. Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom

    Hanna Zagefka

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SimanTov-Nachlieli, I., Shnabel, N. (2017). Promoting Helping Behaviour Across Group Boundaries Through the Restoration of the Agentic Identities of Conflicting Groups. In: van Leeuwen, E., Zagefka, H. (eds) Intergroup Helping. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53026-0_14

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