A dual-motive model of scapegoating: displacing blame to reduce guilt or increase control.

The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicable. Three studies supported hypotheses derived from this dual-motive model. Framing a negative outcome (environmental destruction or climate change) as caused by one's own harmful actions (value threat) or unknown sources (control threat) both increased scapegoating, and these effects occurred indirectly through feelings of guilt and perceived personal control, respectively (Study 1), and were differentially moderated by affirmations of moral value and personal control (Study 2). Also, scapegoating in response to value threat versus control threat produced divergent, theoretically specified effects on self-perceptions and behavioral intentions (Study 3). Scapegoating is the act of blaming and often punishing a person or a group for a negative outcome that is due, at least in large part, to other causes. Infamous historical examples of scapegoating include the witch trials that occurred in Europe and North America from the 14th to the 18th century, when members of Christian institutions accused thousands of people (mostly women) of cor- rupting society's moral integrity by practicing witchcraft, and the Nazis' attempted extermination of Jews and other minority groups for their alleged responsibility for Germany's economic collapse. Capetown, Bosnia, and Rwanda give additional testimony to the violent conflict that can result when one group is designated as the chief cause of major misfortunes. Scapegoating continues to occur today in various forms. Whether it is politicians blaming China for the worldwide eco- nomic recession (Chen, 2010), Americans blaming Muslims for all incidents of terrorism (Foley, 2011), or religious fundamentalists blaming homosexual individuals for the decline of traditional American values (Eckholm, 2011), people seem all too eager to heap blame onto others for major misfortunes. It is therefore surprising that, after receiving a flurry of theoretical and empirical attention during the 1940s and 1950s (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950; Allport, 1948, 1954/1979; Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939; Hovland & Sears, 1940), the topic of scapegoating has largely receded from focus in con- temporary social psychology. To fill this gap, we present a "dual-motive" model that attempts to provide an integrative and generative empirical framework for understanding when people are most likely to scapegoat and what psychological motives underlie this behavior at the level of the individual. We describe our model in more detail below, but briefly stated, it posits that scapegoating can serve two meaning- fully distinct motives: (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a seemingly inexplicable negative outcome that is otherwise difficult to explain or control. We assess this dual-motive model in three studies that test whether activating each motive influences scapegoating as a func- tion of theoretically specified predictors, mediating variables, and moderating variables. We also test whether the effect of activating each motive on scapegoating produces distinct downstream effects on self-perceptions and behavioral intentions. These studies test model—derived hypotheses in the context of people's attitudes toward environmental destruction and global climate change— topics of contemporary societal concern. In the following two sections, we bring into relief two influential theoretical accounts of the motives behind scapegoating: one fo- cused on the motive to perceive the self as morally valuable, the other focused on the motive to perceive the self as having control over one's environment. We then describe how our dual-motive model integrates both accounts in a way that permits the derivation of novel, testable hypotheses about the causes and consequences of scapegoating.