Who scapegoats? Individual differences moderate the dual-motive model of scapegoating

Abstract

Rothschild and colleagues (2012) proposed that people scapegoat to maintain either their moral identity or control. Two experiments manipulated the threat posed by Climate Change to examine how individual differences moderate who blames a scapegoat. Study 1 (N = 835) found variation in Personal Need for Structure moderated scapegoating when climate change was a chaotic hazard, but not after reminders of one’s own culpability. A second preregistered study (N = 1183) found that whereas those with a high Need for Closure scapegoated when a causally uncertain depiction of climate change threatened their control, those high in Collective Narcissism scapegoated when culpability threatened their group’s moral image. This suggests differences in certainty and status concerns predict scapegoating in different contexts. (119)