Broken Promises: Betrayal and Support for Violence in Intergroup Relations

Josephine Gellersen; Eran Halperin; Tamar Saguy

doi:10.1177/01461672261427540

Broken Promises: Betrayal and Support for Violence in Intergroup Relations

Josephine Gellersen^*
, Eran Halperin
, Tamar Saguy

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Journal	Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672261427540
State	Accepted/In press - 2026

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

betrayal
intergroup conflict
minority expectations
political violence
superordinate identity

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10.1177/01461672261427540

Cite this

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abstract = "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.",

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year = "2026",

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N2 - 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.

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Broken Promises: Betrayal and Support for Violence in Intergroup Relations

Abstract

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Keywords

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