New study highlights power—not morality—as key motivator behind competitive victimhood

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology has reinforced previous findings that the desire for power—rather than a need to protect moral identity—is the strongest driver of competitive victimhood in groups experiencing intergroup conflict. By replicating a 2019 study in the unique context of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers found that both Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel who felt a stronger need for group-based power were more likely to see their group as having suffered more than the other, a pattern known to hinder reconciliation.

Competitive victimhood, the belief that one’s own group has endured more suffering than an opposing group, is common in protracted conflicts and tends to worsen intergroup tensions. Past research has shown that it can justify hostility, reduce empathy, and block peace-building efforts. While some researchers have suggested that people engage in competitive victimhood to restore their group’s moral image, others argue that a desire to gain or maintain power is the more important driver.

To test which motivation is stronger, researchers aimed to replicate a prior study by Kahalon and colleagues, which found that the need for power was a better predictor of competitive victimhood than the need for morality. The new study was conducted in April 2020, shortly after Israel’s first wave of COVID-19 infections, during a national lockdown. The researchers wanted to see whether these earlier findings would still hold in the face of a shared external threat—one that might encourage solidarity or diminish competition between groups.

The study surveyed 357 participants living in Israel: 205 Jewish Israelis and 152 Arab Israelis. Participants were recruited via social media and completed an online questionnaire measuring various psychological factors. These included their identification with their ethnic group, views on the legitimacy and stability of group status relations, perceived commonality with other groups, and their needs for power and morality. They were also asked to rate how much they believed their group had suffered compared to the other—an indicator of competitive victimhood.

To ensure consistency, the survey used the same wording and structure as the original 2019 study. Measures included items such as “It is of highest priority for me that the group of Arabs/Jews in Israel become more powerful” (to assess need for power) and “I wish the Arabs/Jews would perceive us, Jews/Arabs, as moral” (to assess need for morality). Competitive victimhood was measured by agreement with statements like “People must know that those who suffer more from discrimination in Israel are the Jews/Arabs.”

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The study confirmed the earlier finding that Arab participants, as members of a disadvantaged group, reported higher levels of competitive victimhood than Jewish participants. Arab participants also reported stronger needs for both power and morality compared to Jewish participants.

Importantly, both groups showed a correlation between greater needs for power and morality and stronger engagement in competitive victimhood. But when both motivations were analyzed together, only need for power remained a significant predictor. This was true for both Arabs and Jews. The need for morality did not predict competitive victimhood when controlling for the need for power.

For Arab participants, the strength of the relationship between power needs and competitive victimhood was even greater than in the original 2019 study, suggesting that the COVID-19 context may have amplified status concerns. Among Jewish participants, need for power also remained a robust predictor, while the need for morality had no significant effect.

An exploratory analysis examined whether the effect of morality might operate indirectly through power. In both groups, the researchers found that the relationship between moral motivation and competitive victimhood was indeed mediated by the desire for power. In other words, people who said they wanted to be seen as moral may have ultimately been motivated by a deeper wish for power and status.

Perceived commonality—feelings of “being in the same boat”—also played a role, though not uniformly. Among Jews, stronger feelings of commonality with other groups were associated with less competitive victimhood. Among Arabs, the opposite pattern emerged: stronger commonality was linked to more competitive victimhood, though this effect disappeared in more complex statistical models. This finding may reflect differing interpretations of shared experience between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

The study was conducted during a unique period of global crisis, which could have influenced how participants viewed their relationships with other groups. Although the pandemic created shared risks and hardships, the specific impact of COVID-19 in Israel disproportionately affected Arab citizens, potentially reinforcing perceptions of inequality. The study did not directly measure perceived threat or the extent to which participants felt solidarity with the other group due to the pandemic.

Another limitation involves the measurement of motivation. The need for power was assessed using items that may overlap with other concepts such as social dominance, which involves a preference for hierarchical relations between groups. Future research could benefit from refining these measures to distinguish different types of power motives—such as empowerment versus control.

Future research might also explore how power and morality needs interact with broader factors like justice, group norms, or efforts to restore equality. For example, it is possible that some claims of victimhood are driven not by a desire to gain power over others, but to restore fairness and recognition. The motivations underlying competitive victimhood may vary depending on historical context, group status, and the perceived legitimacy of grievances.

The study, “Replicating What Motivates Conflicting Groups to Engage in Competitive Victimhood: The Roles of Need for Power and Need for Morality,” was authored by Samer Halabi, Noor Masi, and John F. Dovidio.