Long Suffering Falls Short

Research by Roland Imhoff, a doctoral candidate in the department of social and legal psychology at the University of Bonn, and Rainer Banse, a University of Bonn professor, reveals that emphasizing Jews' ongoing suffering from past atrocities may actually inflame anti-Semitism rather than cool it. There is a widespread assumption that collective guilt has positive outcomes," notes Imhoff. Yet several theories in sociology and psychology offer a different logic: Guilt moves people not to relieve suffering, but to exacerbate it by rationalizing that the victims somehow deserve their plight. Other theories reach the same conclusion through different paths: Rather than guilt, people's desire to believe in a just world or to maintain the status quo can lead them to despise victims.