Competitive victimhood: a review of the theoretical and empirical literature

• Reviews literature related to competitive victimhood (CV), including both motives for and consequences of CV.
• Discusses how the emergence of CV has been facilitated by a shift in perceptions of victims, perpetrators, and morality.
• Describes three CV research areas: intractable conflict, structural inequality, and intra-minority intergroup relations.
• Synthesizes findings, draws attention to research highlights, and discusses value and importance of CV research.

Competitive victimhood (CV), which is a tendency to see one's group as having comparatively suffered relative to an outgroup, has been gaining attention in social psychology. An increasing number of researchers have begun to address CV, both directly and indirectly. The present review organizes the literature related to CV around three themes: intractable conflict, structural inequality, and intra-minority intergroup relations. Although literature related to CV is diverse, CV has been consistently linked to important aspects of intergroup relations (e.g., continuation of and resistance to resolving conflict) and intrapersonal processes (e.g., biased memory and self-perception). This review highlights the pervasive and impactful role of CV, while also drawing attention to cultural developments that explain the rising interest in CV in contemporary research.