Empire State of Mind: Imperial Legacies and Competitive Innocence

Can exposure to harmful acts committed by other groups lead to refusal to confront hostilities perpetrated by one’s own ingroup? This project seeks to explore the extent to which favourable inter-group comparison – the invocation of sentiments such as “we might be bad, but at least we’re not as bad as them” – can affect how ingroup members confront legacies of perpetration. In doing so it contributes to understanding the psychological defences used by group members when confronted with information that threatens their group’s status. It focuses specifically on the role of inter-group comparison in the UK, a country which often stands accused of having failed to come to terms with its imperial past and the acts and systems of perpetration effected therein.