26/03/2026 – Rebekka KESBERG

Abstract

Violent attacks against politicians are increasing across European democracies and are often condemned in public as unacceptable. But what if the victims are perceived as a threat to democracy ? We explore this question in three experiments in which participants ( N = 1,200) served as jury members on a fictional court case judging attacks in which supporters of a political party were harmed. In line with ingroup favoritism, moral acceptability was lower when their in-group was attacked compared to an out-group. We found no ingroup favoritism for length of punishment. However, perceived democratic threat of the victims impacted moral acceptability and length of punishment. Moral acceptability increased and length of punishment decreased when the victims were seen as a threat to democracy. The findings are complemented by the analysis of comments about real-life attacks in online newspaper sections. Using reflexive thematic coding, we find that people predominantly condemned the attacks emphasizing that, independence of politicians’ political views, violence is not acceptable in a democracy. However, individuals also engage in victim-blaming writing that some politicians may ‘deserve’ it as they themselves pose threat to democracy. I will discuss the findings considering the current political climate and societal polarization.

Rebekka KESBERG, University of Sussex

[https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p525373-rebekka-kesberg]