Group Entitlement, Anger and Participation in Intergroup Violence

Although a number of scholars have examined the determinants of intergroup violence, there is little research on why thousands of ordinary people take part in attacks on other ethnic, religious, sectarian, national, or partisan groups. This paper proposes a two-part emotional theory of participation. First, the theory argues that participants are driven by the emotion of intergroup anger. Anger, in turn, is hypothesized to be triggered by beliefs about the intergroup distribution of resources in a society, as well as beliefs about the distribution that ought to exist. Thus, when another group is perceived to violate these group entitlements—by taking jobs thought to belong to the ingroup, for example—anger is experienced and individuals become more willing to take part in violence against the outgroup. The theory is tested using a new survey dataset collected in a slum in South Africa where attacks against immigrants occurred in 2008 and where intergroup tensions remain. Violations of group entitlements are strongly linked with intergroup anger, which, in turn, is associated with heightened intentions to take part in another attack on the other group. Anger is, moreover, a significant mediator of the effect of violations of group entitlement.