Conflict between groups plays a powerful role in shaping social interaction within groups. Within groups, social status—respect, prestige, and deference—organizes, motivates, and stratifies social interaction. Yet, studies exploring how conflict between groups shapes social status within groups are relatively rare. We argue that intergroup conflict creates opportunities for individuals to gain or lose status by demonstrating group commitment. We examine two contrasting intergroup behaviors—revenge and forgiveness—and evaluate the idea that these behaviors will be viewed as status-worthy to the extent that they are perceived to signal group motivation. Furthermore, we test the hypothesis that avengers and forgivers gain status by offering group-motivated accounts of their behavior. Pairing an original national probability sample with an experimental survey design, we examine how avengers and forgivers are viewed in everyday conflicts across three widely held identities: national identity, political partisanship, and sports team fandom. We find that Americans perceive intergroup forgiveness as more status-worthy, and a stronger indicator of group motivation, than intergroup revenge. In open-ended survey questions, forgiving ingroup members were described as more status-worthy, competent, and warm, and less dominant than their vengeful counterparts. However, we find little evidence that individuals can directly gain status by claiming that their actions are motivated by concern for the group. Our work speaks to theories of conflict, identity, and social status. More broadly, understanding how Americans value intergroup revenge and forgiveness offers insight into the frequency and intensity of identity-based conflict in contemporary American society.

中文翻译：

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“以眼还眼”还是“以牙还牙”？群际冲突中报复与宽恕的地位后果

群体之间的冲突在塑造群体内部的社会互动方面起着强大的作用。在群体内部，社会地位——尊重、声望和顺从——组织、激励和分层社会互动。然而，探索群体间冲突如何影响群体内社会地位的研究相对较少。我们认为，群际冲突为个人通过展示群体承诺创造了获得或失去地位的机会。我们研究了两种截然不同的群体间行为——报复和宽恕——并评估了这样一种观点，即这些行为将被视为具有地位价值，因为它们被认为是群体动机的信号。此外，我们检验了复仇者和宽恕者通过提供对他们行为的集体动机描述来获得地位的假设。我们将原始国家概率样本与实验性调查设计相结合，研究在三种广泛持有的身份的日常冲突中如何看待复仇者和宽恕者：国家身份、政治党派关系和运动队球迷。我们发现，美国人认为群体间的宽恕比群体间的报复更具地位价值，也是群体动机的更强指标。在开放式调查问题中，宽容的内群体成员被描述为更有地位、更有能力、更热情，而且比他们报复心强的同行更不强势。然而，我们发现几乎没有证据表明个人可以通过声称他们的行为是出于对群体的关心而直接获得地位。我们的工作涉及冲突、身份和社会地位的理论。更广泛地，