Broken Promises: Betrayal and Support for Violence in Intergroup Relations

In diverse societies, minority groups may face challenges when events signal exclusion from a superordinate identity (SOI) shared with the relevant majority groups. We examine how such SOI threats relate to hardline political attitudes, focusing on betrayal as a potential mechanism. A cross-sectional study of Ethiopian Jews in Israel (N = 276) showed that priming an SOI threat was associated with support for violent resistance via betrayal. A two-wave study of Arab-Muslims in Israel (N = 165) showed that a real-time SOI-threatening event predicted betrayal and, in turn, increased support for violence, particularly among those with stronger baseline SOI. An additional two-wave study of Israeli Jewish women (N = 584) during the recent Gaza war extended this framework to a broader SOI shared with women worldwide: stronger baseline SOI predicted higher expectations of solidarity, which, when undermined by SOI threat, was associated with greater betrayal and hawkish wartime policy support.