Acknowledgment after mass violence: Effects on psychological well-being and intergroup relations

Abstract

2007). However, while social psychological research has begun to examine the processes underlying perpetrator groups' (un)willingness to acknowledge harmdoing committed by ingroup members (e.g.

Winning the victim status can open conflicting groups to reconciliation: Evidence from the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

“…We assigned Israeli Jewish and Palestinian participants into either a control, neutral condition, or a condition in which they were exposed to a text, affirming that their ingroup had been subjected to greater suffering and injustice than the outgroup—thus winning the victim status. In line with the integrated theorizing by Shnabel et al () and Vollhardt et al (), we predicted that Jews and Palestinians assigned to the winning‐the‐victim‐status condition would show heightened willingness to forgive and reconcile, and to endorse a less pessimistic view of the conflict (Hypothesis 1).…”

Fighting the Past: Perceptions of Control, Historical Misperceptions, and Corrective Information in the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict

“…When conflicts between groups intensify, individuals are more likely to excuse or deny collective responsibility for their group's past misdeeds (Roccas, Klar, and Liviatan, ; Wohl and Branscombe, ). Similarly, acknowledging wrongdoing against the other side in a conflict may provide a path toward reconciliation (e.g., Vollhardt, Mazur, and Lemahieu, ; Klar and Schori‐Eyal, ).…”

When History Teaching Turns into Parrhesia: The Case of Italian Colonial Crimes

“…Assuming the pragmatic point of view that frames Foucault's studies, we may consider history teaching that breaks down social silence on past in-group crimes as a specific communicative choice, inserted into the wider set of social and psychological processes eventually leading to intergroup reconciliation ). More precisely, it could be argued that the factual evidence provided by this specific kind of history teaching, provided when this same evidence is lacking in any other kind of social discourse, is essential for descendants of past perpetrators to fully acknowledge past historical responsibilities of their group (Vollhardt et al 2014).…”

“…According to this theoretical frame, psychological consequences of a frank history teaching about socially denied crimes are expected to be mainly negative. But if we understand acknowledgment of past responsibilities as a first unavoidable step for a real intergroup reconciliation (Vollhardt et al 2014), then presenting descendants of perpetrators with a frank and truthful narrative of in-group wrongdoings may be seen on the contrary as the best choice to cope with this difficult past, since the lack of knowledge of past in-group responsibilities may be expected to threaten the harmony of current intergroup relations. According to this other theoretical frame, even if first psychological reactions in front of a clear narrative of in-group crimes could be expected to be ambivalent or fully negative, in the long run the breaking of an unrealistic denial could be expected to produce overall positive consequences for receivers, enabling them to better understand the history of their group.…”