Guilt, blame and anti-Semitism

The phrase “secondary anti-Semitism” was coined following World War II to describe a newly emerging form of antipathy toward Jews, one actually fueled by memories of the Holocaust. The idea is that Jews’ ongoing suffering from German atrocities causes intolerable pangs of guilt in Germans—even young Germans—and this discomfort results in a paradoxical increase in anti-Jewish sentiment. The Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex captured the irony best when he famously quipped: “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”

Such victim-blaming fits with a number of robust psychological ideas, most notably the “just world” theory: Humans are highly motivated to believe in a world where people get what they deserve, and we therefore cope with guilt and anxiety by rationalizing the status quo. But so far the notion of secondary anti-Semitism remains untested and unproven.

Two psychologists at the University of Bonn are changing that. Roland Imhoff and Rainer Banse ran a little test on German students to see if awareness of Jews’ persistent pain influenced their attitudes toward Jews. The students were about 23 years old on average, so the Holocaust was ancient history to them. The researchers used a well-tested questionnaire to assess the students’ levels of anti-Semitism, and then they had all the students read an account of the atrocities at Auschwitz. But there were two different accounts: Half the students read that the events at Auschwitz, while terrible, were a thing of the past, not really relevant to modern Jews. The others read about the continuing trauma of both survivors and their ancestors. The researchers measured anti-Semitism levels again three months later, to see if the two groups differed.

I know what you’re thinking. Wouldn’t they lie if they really had negative thoughts or feelings about Jews? After all, it’s socially unacceptable to be anti-Jew in today’s Germany. Well, the psychologists thought of that, too, and planned for it. They tested some of the volunteers in a psychophysiology lab, and told them that their answers were being monitored by a highly reliable lie detector. They even attached fake electrodes to their fingers for the sake of authenticity.

The results were clear and provocative, and the fake lie detector made all the difference. As reported this week on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the students who read about the ongoing suffering of Jews showed a decided increase in anti-Semitism—but only if they were hooked up to the lie detector. These students presumably were telling the truth about their thoughts and feelings, because they figured they’d be caught anyway. Those who thought they could get away with lying showed no such spike in anti-Semitism, presumably because they were giving the politically-correct responses.

Imhoff and Banse interpret these findings as the first direct evidence for secondary anti-Semitism, and also as a cautionary tale. Although it seems morally right to acknowledge victim suffering and keep the memories of atrocities alive, such a strategy may be counterproductive. Indeed, focusing on persisting suffering may undermine sympathy and actually increase prejudice.