Attitudes Towards World War II Collaboration in Belgium: Effects on Political Positioning Towards the Amnesty Issue in the Two Main Linguistic Communities.

It is a known fact that some Belgians collaborated with the Nazi occupier during WWII. However, according to a popular myth, collaboration was widespread in Flanders, whereas Walloons bravely resisted. Of course, historical reality is much more nuanced, but this oversimplification has largely resurfaced in political debates surrounding the Belgian linguistic conflict. Demands for amnesty for former collaborators addressed by Flemish nationalist parties are a case in point. We conducted two studies in order to investigate Belgians' attitudes towards this political issue in the two linguistic communities. In 2012, a first survey (N = 521; 315 French-speakers (FS) and 206 Dutch-speakers (DS)) showed that WWII collaboration was morally condemned, and attitudes towards amnesty were predominantly negative, in both groups. However, DS tended to support amnesty more than FS. This effect of Linguistic Group on Support for Amnesty was mediated by Judgments of Morality of collaboration, and this mediation was moderated by Linguistic identification. In 2015, a second survey (N = 774; 476 FS and 298 DS) confirmed these results. Moreover, judgments about the Unfairness of the repression of collaboration also mediated the effect of Linguistic Group on Support for Amnesty. These results suggest that differences in political position-taking regarding the granting of amnesty between DS and FS are, at least partly, due to different attitudes towards collaboration and to the membership to a linguistic community.

Intergroup conflict self-perpetuates via meaning: Exposure to intergroup conflict increases meaning and fuels a desire for further conflict.

We investigated whether violent conflict provides individuals with a sense of meaning that they are hesitant to let go of, thus contributing to the perpetuation of intergroup conflict. Across a wide variety of contexts, we found that making intergroup conflict salient increased the meaning people found in conflict and, in turn, increased support for conflict-perpetuating beliefs, ideologies, policies, and behaviors. These effects were detected among participants exposed to reminders of intergroup conflict (the American Revolutionary War and the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS; Studies 1A and 1B), participants living through actual intergroup conflict (the 2014 Israel-Gaza war; Study 2), and participants who perceived actual intergroup conflicts to be larger versus smaller in scope (the November 2015 Paris attacks; Studies 3 and 4). We also found that directly manipulating the perceived meaning in conflict (in the context of the 2014 NYC "hatchet attack"; Study 5) led to greater perceived meaning in life in general and thereby greater support for conflict escalation. Together, these findings suggest that intergroup conflict can serve as a source of meaning that people are motivated to hold on to. We discuss our findings in the context of the meaning making and threat compensation literatures, and consider their implications for perspectives on conflict escalation and resolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).