RESEARCH ARTICLE Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? How concern for social- image and felt shame helps explain responses in reciprocal intergroup conflict Nicolay Gausel*, Colin Wayne Leach†, Agostino Mazziotta‡ & Friederike Feuchte§ * Department of Psychosocial Health, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway † Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA ‡ University of Hagen, Germany § Monrovia, Liberia Correspondence Nicolay Gausel, University of Agder, Postboks 422, 4604 Kristiansand, Norway. E-mail: nicolay.gausel@uia.no Received: 16 February 2015 Accepted: 5 January 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2295 Keywords: shame, guilt, social-image, revenge, reconciliation, victim, perpetrator Friederike Feuchte, Independent Researcher. The raw data for this study is stored with the GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences with the doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7802/1331 Abstract In conflicts with reciprocal violence, individuals belong to a group that has been both perpetrator and victim. In a field experiment in Liberia, West Africa, we led participants (N = 146) to focus on their group as either perpetrator or victim in order to investigate its effect on orientation towards inter-group reconciliation or revenge. Compared to a perpetrator focus, a victim focus led to slightly more revenge orientation and moderately less reconciliation orientation. The effect of the focus manipulation on revenge orientation was fully mediated, and reconciliation orientation partly mediated, by viewing the in-group’s social-image as at risk. Independent of perpetrator or victim focus, shame (but not guilt) was a distinct explanation of moderately more reconciliation orientation. This is consistent with a growing body of work demonstrating the pro-social potential of shame. Taken together, results suggest how groups in reciprocal conflict might be encouraged towards reconciliation and away from revenge by feeling shame for their wrongdoing and viewing their social-image as less at risk. As victims and perpetrators are widely thought to have different orientations to inter-group reconciliation and revenge, we suggest that work on reciprocal conflicts should account for the fact that people can belong to a group that has been both perpetrator and victim. Many analyses of intergroup conflict distinguish between perpetrators and victims. It is often assumed to be obvious which is which. However, in the real world, it is not always so clear. For instance, in reciprocal conflicts—in places like Syria, Egypt, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda—each group has perpetrated acts of violence against the other group and suffered as victims of such acts (e.g., Brym & Araj, 2006; Staub, 2006; Stevenson, Condor, & Abell, 2007). As such, members of the involved groups in or after a reciprocal conflict can focus on their group as a perpetrator or as a victim (Mazziotta, Feuchte, Gausel, & Nadler, 2014; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014). To examine how focusing on one’s group as a perpetrator or as a victim effect the orientation towards reconciliation and revenge, we led individuals to focus on their group as either perpetrator or victim in a field experiment in Liberia—where civil wars engulfed the society in devastating reciprocal conflicts between 1989 and 2003 (Cain, 1999). As much research on reconciliation assume that perpetrators can be motivated to reconcile because it can re-establish their moral standing (for reviews, see Nadler, 2012; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015), we examined whether a perpetrator focus led those in this reciprocal conflict to be more oriented to reconciliation. As an angry, hostile desire for revenge is common in recipro- cal conflict, we also examined orientation to revenge. Because of the reciprocal violence, victims have little reason to expect the adversary to identify as a perpetra- tor obliged to reconcile or make reparation (Brym & Araj, 2006; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002; Mikula, 1993; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014); thus, revenge should seem especially likely for those who focus on their group as a victim. To explain these contrasting effects of perpetrator versus victim focus on orientation to revenge and reconciliation, we examined Gausel and Leach’s (2011) notion of perceived risk to group social-image as a mediator. A social-image at risk stokes fears of exclusion and isolation—the most serious of social threats (Gausel, Leach, Vignoles, & Brown, 2012; Gausel, Vignoles, & Leach, 2016). Thus, greater perceived risk to social- image should help explain orientation to revenge (more prevalent in victim-focus) and lesser perceived risk European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. O62 EJSP