What is Vicarious Retribution?
Vicarious retribution occurs when a member of a group commits an act of aggression towards the members of an outgroup for an assault or provocation that had no personal consequences for him or her but which did harm a fellow ingroup member. Furthermore, retribution is often directed at outgroup members who themselves were not the direct causal agents in the original attack against the person’s ingroup. Thus, retribution is vicarious in that neither the agent of retaliation nor the target of retribution were directly involved in the original event that precipitated the intergroup conflict.
