Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat

• We examined how moral outrage can result from displaced blame for ingroup harmdoing.
• Salient ingroup harmdoing leads people to blame a viable alternative harmdoer.
• The ability to blame scapegoat for ingroup harmdoing evoked moral outrage.
• Inability to blame scapegoat for ingroup harmdoing evoked collective guilt.
• Outrage and guilt mediated reparative and retributive action, respectively.

Integrating research on intergroup emotions and scapegoating, we propose that moral outrage toward an outgroup perceived to be unjustly harming another outgroup can represent a motivated displacement of blame that reduces collective guilt over ingroup harm-doing. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating the purported cause of working-class Americans' suffering (ingroup cause vs. unknown cause vs. outgroup cause) and whether a potential scapegoat target (i.e., illegal immigrants) was portrayed as a viable or nonviable alternative source of this harm. Supporting hypotheses, participants primed with ingroup culpability for working-class harm (versus other sources) reported increased moral outrage and support for retributive action toward immigrants when immigrants were portrayed as a viable source of that harm, but reported increased collective guilt and support for reparative action when immigrants were portrayed as a nonviable source of that harm. Effects on retributive and reparative action were differentially mediated by moral outrage and collective guilt, respectively.