Collective victimization can lead to competitiveness and reduced willingness to act on behalf of other victimized groups, but in some cases increases prosocial responses. We propose the concept of victim category accessibility (VCA) as one explanation for different reactions to victimization. Assuming that ‘victims’ is one among many categories into which individuals classify themselves and others, high VCA should increase the common categorization of ingroup and outgroup members as victims and increase prosocial responses towards victimized outgroups. Conversely, low VCA should increase the difficulty of identifying commonalities between ingroup and outgroup victims and reduce prosocial responses. In three studies, we develop a novel measure of VCA based on the Indirect Category Accessibility Task and demonstrate its association with willingness to act on behalf of victimized outgroups, but not ingroup members, beyond self-reported beliefs about victimization. The findings suggest a key role for VCA in understanding prosocial responses towards victimized outgroups.

中文翻译：

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每个人都受伤（有时）：受害者类别可及性在对受害外群体的亲社会反应中的作用

集体受害会导致竞争和代表其他受害群体采取行动的意愿降低，但在某些情况下会增加亲社会反应。我们提出受害者类别可访问性 (VCA) 的概念作为对受害的不同反应的一种解释。假设“受害者”是个人对自己和他人进行分类的众多类别之一，高 VCA 应该增加内群体和外群体成员作为受害者的共同分类，并增加对受害外群体的亲社会反应。相反，低 VCA 会增加识别内群体和外群体受害者之间共性的难度，并减少亲社会反应。在三项研究中，我们基于间接类别可访问性任务开发了一种新的 VCA 测量方法，并证明其与代表受害外群体而非内群体成员行事的意愿相关，超出了自我报告的受害信念。研究结果表明，VCA 在理解对受害外群体的亲社会反应方面发挥着关键作用。