Justice Concerns Can Feed Nationalistic Concerns and Impede Solidarity in the Euro Crisis: How Victim Sensitivity Translates into Political Attitudes

Given a certain content similarity of JS and political attitude items, we submitted the four items indicating victim and observer sensitivity and the 16 items indicating attitudes to a factor analysis (Varimax rotation), None of the four items measuring justice sensitivity cross-loaded on any of the factors that the attitude items loaded on (cross-loadings between −.04 and .26). Similarly, none of the items measuring attitudes cross-loaded on either observer or victim sensitivity factors (cross-loadings between −.01 and −.24). Factor loadings are presented in Supplementary materials.

To make sure that the statements reflect either the solidarity or the exploitation frame, we conducted a pretest, in which 22 student participants rated them on a number of dimensions. To measure the degree to which each statement reflects the solidarity frame, participants indicated to what extent the statements described the debtor countries as “victims” and Germany as a beneficiary of the euro crisis (“solidarity frame index”). To measure the degree to which each statement reflects the exploitation frame, participants indicated to what degree the statements reflected the idea of Germany as a victim and the debtor countries as “beneficiaries” of the euro crisis (“exploitation frame index”). The responses were given on a 7-point scale ranging from “not at all” to “very much”. The statements used in the exploitation frame in the main study obtained significantly high scores on the exploitation frame index (M = 4.59, SD = 1.44) than on the solidarity frame index (M = 2.60, SD = 1.35, t (21) = 5.27, p < .001). Conversely, the statements used in the solidarity frame in the main study obtained significantly high scores on the solidarity frame index (M = 3.52, SD = 1.32) than on the exploitation frame index (M = 2.39, SD = 0.87, t (21) = −6.84, p < .001).

The free recall task was introduced for other purposes than the goals of the present research. The recall accuracy was unrelated to justice sensitivity. Interested readers can obtain further details directly from the authors.