How collective punishment harms intergroup relations through ingroup homogeneity, perceived fairness, and counter-collective action: A registered report

Collective punishment targets people who did not commit the transgression that led to the sanctions as a response to the actions of their ingroup members. This registered report argues that such punishments lead to ingroup cohesiveness and harm intergroup relations by instigating a punishment-revenge cycle. In two pilot studies (N = 450) conducted in Turkey and Germany, we tested the influence of collective punishment on ingroup identification, perceived outgroup fairness, system illegitimacy, distributive justice, outgroup attitudes and collective action. Although pilot studies provide null findings, collective punishment decreases perceived outgroup fairness and positive attitudes towards the outgroup in Turkey. In the main studies, we replicated and extended our initial findings via different social contexts in Turkey and Germany using high-powered experiments (N = 1609). We demonstrated that collective punishment increased ingroup homogeneity and counter-collective action intentions, while it decreased perceived outgroup fairness and positive outgroup attitudes.