The Role of Agency and Morality in Reconciliation Processes

The Needs-Based Model: Basic Logic and Empirical Support

Social-psychological theorizing suggests that there are two fundamental dimensions, the “Big Two,” along which people judge themselves and others at both individual and group levels: the agency dimension, representing traits such as strength, competence, and influence, and the moral-social dimension, representing traits such as morality, warmth, and trustworthiness (Abele & Wojciszke, 2013). Building on this theorizing, the needs-based model suggests that transgressions threaten victims’ and perpetrators’ identities asymmetrically: Victims, who feel inferior regarding their ability to influence their outcomes, experience threat to their agency dimension of identity. Perpetrators, by contrast, suffer from threat to their moral-social identity dimension. While this threat is sometimes accompanied by feelings of guilt, many times perpetrators view their behavior as legitimate (Baumeister, 1997). Nevertheless, knowing that psychologically significant others view their behavior as immoral threatens perpetrators’ moral image and leads to anxiety over social exclusion, the sanction imposed upon those who violate their community’s moral standards.

Because people are motivated to maintain their positive identities, these threats produce different motivational states. Victims, weak and humiliated, experience the need to restore their agency, whereas perpetrators experience the need to restore their moral image and gain (re)acceptance to the community from which they feel potentially excluded. If these needs remain unsatisfied, they impede reconciliation. For example, sometimes victims behave vengefully in order to regain power (Frijda, 1994) and perpetrators engage in moral disengagement (e.g., minimizing the harm’s severity; Bandura, 1999) to downplay their culpability. However, exchange interactions through which victims and perpetrators satisfy each other’s needs for empowerment and acceptance may open them to reconciliation.

The apology-forgiveness cycle is a primary social mechanism through which such an exchange can be accomplished. Specifically, perpetrators’ apology constitutes an admission of owing victims a moral debt, which returns control to the victims, and victims’ expressions of forgiveness and empathy toward the perpetrators’ perspective mitigate the perpetrators’ moral inferiority and reassure them of their belongingness. Beyond using the apology-forgiveness cycle, which is the most straightforward example of exchange leading to need satisfaction, victims and perpetrators can satisfy each other’s needs in additional manners. For example, perpetrators may empower their victims by expressing respect for their achievements and abilities, or, in the case of victimized groups, appealing to their national pride and heritage. Similarly, victims can express acceptance of their perpetrators through readiness to form friendships or engage in economic and cultural cooperation.

A successful exchange of empowerment and acceptance can promote reconciliation through two routes (Shnabel, Nadler, & Dovidio, 2014). First, it can restore the conflicting parties’ positive identities through symbolically erasing the roles of “powerless victim” and “immoral perpetrator.” Additionally, messages of acceptance conveyed by the victims imply that they will not retaliate against or avoid the perpetrator (two common responses among victims; McCullough, 2008), and messages of empowerment conveyed by perpetrators imply that they will not repeat the transgression (because they now recognize the victim’s value). Thus, the exchange of these messages can restore victims’ and perpetrators’ mutual trust. The restoration of both trust and positive identities facilitates reconciliation. Figure 1 summarizes the proposed process.

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Fig. 1.

The needs-based model of reconciliation.

A series of experiments (Shnabel & Nadler, 2008) supported the model’s hypotheses in contexts of interpersonal transgressions. One study used the creativity-test paradigm, in which participants were assigned to be either “writers” who composed marketing slogans for products or “judges” who evaluated these slogans. In the experimental condition, judges were instructed to be very strict because being “too nice” could harm their own chances of passing the test. Later on, participants were informed that the judges had passed the test whereas writers had failed it because of their judges’ harsh evaluations. In the control condition, judges were instructed to be lenient, and participants were later informed that the judges had passed the test whereas writers had failed it because of an external committee’s decision (this made it possible to control for success and failure in the absence of a deliberate transgression). As predicted, writers in the experimental condition (i.e., victims) had the lowest sense of agency and the highest need for power, whereas judges in the experimental condition (i.e., perpetrators) had the worst moral image and the highest need for acceptance. In a subsequent study, we again used the creativity-test paradigm to assign participants to be either victims or perpetrators. After being informed of the results of the test, participants received messages from their partner that expressed, depending on experimental condition, empowerment (i.e., acknowledgment of their high competence), acceptance (i.e., acknowledgment of their high social skills), or neither. As expected, victims’ readiness to reconcile was highest in the empowerment condition, whereas perpetrators’ readiness to reconcile was highest in the acceptance condition.

Another set of studies (Shnabel, Nadler, Ullrich, Dovidio, & Carmi, 2009) tested the model in intergroup contexts. One study exposed Jewish and German participants to speeches allegedly made by their out-group’s representatives at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The speeches’ main message conveyed either acceptance (e.g., “we should accept the [Jews/Germans] and remember that we are all human beings”) or empowerment (e.g., “the [Germans/Jews] have the right to be strong and proud”). As expected, Jews showed greater readiness to reconcile with Germans following empowering messages, whereas Germans showed greater readiness to reconcile with Jews following accepting messages. Thus, the dynamic between members of victimized and perpetrating groups corresponded to that between individual victims and perpetrators.

Extending the Model to “Dual” Contexts

While the model’s original formulation referred to “victims” and “perpetrators” as mutually exclusive roles, in many conflicts both parties serve as victims and perpetrators simultaneously. In one experiment that explored this duality (SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014), participants worked in dyads and had to allocate valuable resources (i.e., credit points). Participants then received feedback on the allocation task, which constituted the experimental manipulation: In the control condition, participants learned that both their own and their partner’s allocations were fair; in the victim condition, that their partner’s allocation was unfair (i.e., she or he allocated the credit points in a selfish rather than a generous manner, which did not align with the accepted norms); in the perpetrator condition, that their allocation was unfair; and in the dual condition, that both their and their partner’s allocations were unfair. In terms of psychological needs, “duals” showed heightened needs for both agency (similar to victims) and positive moral image (similar to perpetrators). In terms of behavior, however, like victims, duals translated their heightened need for agency into vengefulness (e.g., denial of credit points from their partner), but unlike perpetrators, they failed to translate their heightened need for positive moral image into prosociality (e.g., donating to the partner). Similar findings, pointing to the precedence of agency-related over morality-related needs in determining duals’ behavior, were obtained in the intergroup contexts involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) and the Liberian civil wars (Mazziotta, Feuchte, Gausel, & Nadler, 2014).

These findings are consistent with Baumeister’s (1997) observation that victimhood is more psychologically profound than perpetration. Indeed, “dual” conflicting parties often develop a deep sense of victimization, but not of perpetration, and compete over the victim status (Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, & Nadler, 2012). We theorized that adversaries engage in such “competitive victimhood” because receiving acknowledgment of one’s victim status simultaneously satisfies the two needs heightened among duals: the need for positive moral image (because the victim status is associated with innocence) and the need for agency (because receiving acknowledgment of one’s victim status implies entitlement to various forms of empowerment—e.g., reparations and third-party support).

In studies that tested this theorizing (Shnabel, Halabi, & Noor, 2013), participants were Israeli Palestinians and Jews assigned either to the common-victim-identity condition, which highlighted that both groups experienced great suffering as a result of the conflict, or to the common-perpetrator-identity condition, which highlighted that both groups actively inflicted harm upon each other. As illustrated in Figure 2, participants in both conditions reduced competitive victimhood and increased forgiveness (compared to those in a control condition), ¹ yet this effect was mediated through different paths: reduced moral defensiveness (i.e., need to protect the in-group’s morality at any cost) in the common-victim-identity condition versus increased sense of agency in the common-perpetrator-identity condition. These findings support our theorizing about the dual motivations leading to competitive victimhood and carry practical implications for developing strategies for overcoming competitive victimhood—a major barrier to reconciliation.

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Fig. 2.

The paths through which common-victim-identity and common-perpetrator-identity interventions increased forgiveness among Israeli Palestinians and Jews. Adapted from “Overcoming Competitive Victimhood and Facilitating Forgiveness Through Re-categorization Into a Common Victim or Perpetrator Identity,” by N. Shnabel, S. Halabi, and M. Noor, 2013, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, p. 872. Copyright 2013 by Elsevier. Adapted with permission.

Extending the Model to Contexts of Structural Inequality

Intergroup conflict manifests not only in direct violence (e.g., war) but also in structural violence (Galtung, 1969)—namely, unequal social arrangements that privilege some groups while depriving others. This inequality translates into differential group stereotypes: Disadvantaged groups are often stereotypically perceived as warm but incompetent and advantaged groups as competent but cold and immoral (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). The needs-based model’s logic suggests that when group inequality is perceived as illegitimate (e.g., reflecting unfair discrimination), the needs of advantaged- and disadvantaged-group members should correspond to those of perpetrators and victims.

Studies by Siem, von Oettingen, Mummendey, and Nadler (2013) supported this logic. In one experiment, participants were students of clinical psychology who were randomly assigned to either the high-status or the low-status condition, in which they compared themselves to social workers or psychiatrists, respectively. In the manipulation of (il)legitimacy, participants then learned that intergroup status differences were either legitimate because of different specialization requirements or illegitimate because clinical psychologists and, depending on condition, social workers or psychiatrists (i.e., out-group members) perform similar work. As predicted, in the legitimate-status-differences condition, there were no differences between high- and low-status members in terms of needs for acceptance (wish to be perceived as likable and moral) or agency (wish to be influential). However, in the illegitimate-status-differences condition, high-status-group members’ need for acceptance was higher than that of low-status-group members, whereas the opposite pattern emerged for the need for agency. Consistent findings were obtained in the context of interracial interactions in the United States, such that African Americans were primarily motivated to gain respect whereas Caucasian Americans were primarily motivated to be liked (Bergsieker, Shelton, & Richeson, 2010).

Subsequent studies (Shnabel, Ullrich, Nadler, Dovidio, & Aydin, 2013) found that messages from the out-group that reaffirmed the advantaged group’s warmth and the disadvantaged group’s competence not only improved the groups’ attitudes toward each other but also increased their readiness to collectively act for equality (through demonstrations, petitions, etc.). The latter finding highlights the critical role of identity-restoration processes in promoting structural equality. Regarding disadvantaged groups, research on collective action has shown that although they tend to perceive inequality as unfair, they often fail to actively challenge the status quo because they feel they lack collective efficacy (Mummendey, Kessler, Klink, & Mielke, 1999). Optimistically, however, restoring disadvantaged-group members’ sense of agency through competence-reaffirming messages from the advantaged group prevented this passive acceptance of inequality and increased disadvantaged-group members’ readiness to act for change. Practical interventions to promote positive intergroup relations, which often focus on the communion dimension (e.g., fostering cross-group friendship), should therefore also address power-related issues and directly challenge the stereotypical perception, which perpetuates inequality, of disadvantaged groups as incompetent.

As for advantaged-group members, our findings support Iyer and Leach’s (2010) criticism that the traditional view within social-psychological theorizing fails to recognize the importance of morality in intergroup relations. This failure leads to a limited conceptualization of social change as driven mainly by the action of disadvantaged groups, because advantaged groups are assumed to be primarily motivated to maintain their privilege. Opposite to this traditional view, and consistent with Iyer and Leach’s argument regarding the critical role of morality, we found that once their threatened moral image was reassured, advantaged-group members were ready to relinquish their in-group’s privilege and exhibit solidarity-based collective action.

Future Directions and Conclusion

While the needs-based model has identified the type of messages that adversaries can exchange in order to promote reconciliation, in practice, adversaries often avoid conveying conciliatory messages to each other because they fear these positive gestures might not be reciprocated. Therefore, a critical direction for future research is to examine the potential for identity restoration occurring outside the victim-perpetrator dyad to facilitate reconciliation. One source of such external identity restoration is third parties. Admittedly, in contexts of interpersonal transgressions, empowering and accepting messages from third parties have been found to be relatively ineffective (Shnabel et al., 2014). However, within intergroup contexts, in which conciliatory messages are typically expected to be conveyed via group representatives rather than directly by the victims and perpetrators (Simon & Klandermans, 2001), empowering and accepting messages by third parties who share a common identity with the conflicting out-group have been shown to effectively promote reconciliation. For instance, messages from Jordanian representatives increased Jews’ readiness to reconcile with Palestinians (Harth & Shnabel, 2015).

Identity restoration outside the victim-perpetrator dyad can also be accomplished through self-affirmation processes. Supporting this possibility, Woodyatt and Wenzel (2014) found that affirmation of the moral values breached by the transgression increased perpetrators’ genuine self-forgiveness, which in turn facilitated interpersonal reconciliation (see Barlow et al., 2015, for positive effects of moral self-affirmation on perpetrating groups’ conciliatory tendencies). Also, SimanTov-Nachlieli, Shnabel, Aydin, and Ullrich (2015) ² found that the affirmation of dual conflicting parties’ agency increased their mutual conciliatory tendencies. Future research should further explore the conditions under which third parties or self-affirmation interventions can contribute to, or possibly hamper (e.g., by leading to moral licensing effects), reconciliation.

In conclusion, unlike the study of conflict resolution (in the sense of addressing concrete conflict-related issues), the scientific study of reconciliation, both within and outside psychology (e.g., de Waal, 2000), is relatively young and requires much additional research. We hope that research on the needs-based model will ultimately contribute not only to increasing the theoretical understanding of reconciliation but also to developing practical interventions to promote it.