National Attachment, Past In-Group Perpetratorhood, and Out-Group Attitudes

Exclusionary attitudes are often justified by histories of conflict. A large body of literature explores how making in-group victimhood salient can affect attitudes towards out-groups. Much less, however, has been done to study how episodes in history that position the in-group as perpetrators may reduce or exacerbate animosity towards the victimized group. We fill this gap by studying antisemitism in contemporary Spain. Using a well-powered and pre-registered survey experiment, we prime respondents with the historical expulsion of Jews from Spain in the fifteenth century. The effects of priming this historical episode are conditional on one’s degree of national attachment: respondents who are less attached to the Spanish nation express lower levels of antisemitism in response to the treatment, while those reporting high levels of attachment appear to exhibit a modest backlash. These results update our understanding of how majority populations confront histories that implicate their own group as perpetrators.