Dealing with collective shame and guilt

Psicología Política, Nº 32, 2006, 59-78 DEALING WITH COLLECTIVE SHAME AND GUILT D. Páez, J. Marques, J. Valencia, O. Vincze Universidades del País Vasco, Porto y Pecz RESUMEN Se analizan las funciones de la comunicación informal en la protección de la identidad social. Se describe la culpa y vergüenza colectiva, la asociación entre la influencia de información referente y la credibilidad del rumor, y la validez ecológica de la transmisión triádica como opuesto a la transmisión persona a persona respecto al proceso social de memoria. La reproducción serial se concibe como un paradigma para estudiar representaciones sociales de pasado o la memoria colectiva. También se analizan datos anteriores y teorías en relación con las Comisiones de la Reparación de las violación de los derechos humanos. ABSTRACT We discuss the functions of informal communication in protecting social identity and dealing with collective guilt and shame, the association between referent information influence and rumour credibility, and the ecological validity of the triadic transmission as opposed to the person-to-person transmission in relation to social process of memory. Serial reproduction is conceived of as a paradigm to study social representations of past or collective memory. Previous data and theories are also discussed in relation to Truth and Reparation Commissions that deal with collective human right violations. Key words: collective guilt, informal communication, social process of memory Queens, New York, is known to most people, even outside the United States. What less people know, is that Queens is associated with the name of Catarina of Bragança, the sister of a XVII century Portuguese king. Recently, the New York Portuguese community arranged for a statue of Catarina to be erected in Queens, to celebrate her ruling there. What less Portuguese people did know is that Catarina was associated to slave trading. However, the Queens’ African-American community was aware of it and the statue is now waiting for a new plan. Undoubtedly, the AfricanAmerican and the Portuguese communities in Queens agree that slavery is one of the most immoral endeavours in human history. Nevertheless, it is likely that, from the standpoint of their historical identities, the two groups stand on quite different grounds. The negative feelings of contemporary African-Americans towards slave traders who brought African people to the 17th and 18th century America is more than legitimate. But, contempo- 60 Psicología Política, Nº 32, Mayo 2006 rary Portuguese are not proud of remembering their slave trader ancestors who clearly threaten their image as a group. Collective guilt and shame The same may apply to other former colonial countries, such as Spain. In fact, Spain has a more negative historical stereotype than Portugal: so called Black Legend attributes to Spaniards an image of brutal and arrogant conquerors, in comparison to a more lenient historical stereotype of explorers and more open minded settlers of Brazil. Spaniards have been blamed for many atrocities and these were real but it is fair to remind that Britain, Portugal and France were also involved in brutal colonial wars (Restall, 2004; Thomas, 2004). In any case, Spaniards and Portuguese, as members of national groups, probably experience negative emotions like shame and guilt, as a consequence of the negative groups´ history. Shame and guilt are conceived of as resignation emotions. Negative emotions are related to an appraisal of low control over events and usually lead people to reduce activities and to internal focus. People experience guilt when their personal behaviour is inconsistent with their moral attitude and this emotion involves negative evaluation related to specific behaviours. Lazarus (1999) posits that the core relational theme for guilt is having transgressed moral rules or norms. Action tendencies related to guilt are reparative actions. Guilt also prevents from acting destructively against others. Shame is related to the failure of self or when the exposed self is found inadequate and is felt when a negative evaluation of the global self is involved. For shame the core relational theme is failing to live up to an ideal-ego or not reaching goals (Lazarus, 1999). The action tendency related to shame is wanting to hide or conceal actions. Shame leads to selfimprovement and to restore identity (Izard, 1993; Lewis, 1993). Guilt and shame have intra-group social functions: strength the bonds between members of a group. Shame encourages pro-social behaviour, conformity and responsibility. Guilt increases compliance and reinforces social bonds, with a sense of interpersonal obligation and empathy (Echeberría, 2000). These self-conscious emotions may be felt at group level, this means felt not as a consequence of personal experience, but as a consequence of the experience and behaviour of social categories like nation, ethnic group and so on. In guilt, attention is focused on collective behaviour: We (German people) made this awful thing (Holocaust). Guilt’s main adaptive social function is to prevent interpersonal and inter-group exploitation. In Dealing with collective shame and ... 61 shame, attention is focused on the collective identity: We (German people) made this awful thing (Holocaust). Shames main social function is to restore collective positive identity. However, at the group level little difference is perceived between characterological (We German people...) and behavioural ( ...German people made...) attribution of negative collective events. Moreover, usually in front of negative in-group past collective behaviour subjects perceive lower level of control – and lower level of control of behaviours is associated with shame, as high control is related to guilt (Branscombe, Slugoski & Kappen, 2004). This is why a negative past experience usually elicits both shame and guilt: for instance, university students belonging to the third generation after the WW II, report first, feelings of shame (65%) and second, feelings of guilt (41%) when thinking about the Holocaust (Rensman, 2004). This does not mean that collective guilt and shame are the same emotional reaction. Guilt is strongly related to reparation and apology and shame is usually associated with tendencies to escape, hide or distancing motivation – like avoiding reminders of negative collective event, distancing from the in-group or punishment and derogation in-group black sheep members (Lickel, Schmader & Barquissau, 2004). Usually people feel collective guilt when they categorise themselves in the group of perpetrators, perceive the group as responsible for negative actions that could have been controlled, actions are perceived as illegitimate and morally unjustifiable, harm done remains uncorrected and cost and reparative actions are not perceived as costly or the harm impossible to repair (Branscombe, 2004). Guilt and, particularly, shame are usually felt by victims, because shame is related to negative outcomes that can not be controlled and, in public, portrays an image as weak, inferior or “tainted” by stigma – guilt and shame feelings related to massive women’s rapes in the war by loser nations soldiers are the prototype of this situation. Victims of human right violations, more than perpetrators, feel a lack of ability to control and lower responsibility for negative events. This explains why feeling shame is strongly related to being victimised and usually associated with anger towards the perpetrator and retaliation tendencies, whereas anger is usually unrelated to guilt experience and aggression (Branscombe, Slugoski & Kappen, 2004). In spite of this important difference, guilt and shame reports covariate in self-report studies and both are social emotions that motivate against anti-social collective behaviour and reinforce compliance with norms and pro-social behaviour. Motivated by feelings of collective shame and guilt, people are inclined to restore a positive collective identity or make up 62 Psicología Política, Nº 32, Mayo 2006 amends for their behaviour. Reparative and compensatory actions could serve to repair damaged inter-group and interpersonal relations and to restore in-group self-image (Hoffman, 1982). Wallbot and Scherer (1995) in their large cross-cultural study found that guilt is elicited by immoral behaviour and self attribution (internal factors) and that shame is elicited by “inappropriate” behaviour and more often by other people (external factors). In individualistic and low power distance cultures shame experiences are very similar to guilt experiences – explaining why German subjects report at the same time shame and guilt. Doojse, Branscombe, Spears & Manstead (1998) demonstrate that people may experience socio-centric or collective guilt related to the behaviour of fellow in-groups members (Dutch confronted with their group’s colonial unfavourable past behaviour in Indonesia) even when they personally actually played no role in harming other national groups. Studies show instances of collective guilt in different European, American and NorthAfrican countries (Branscombe & Doojse, 2004). Of course, we are not talking about collective judicial guilt: as Jaspers posits from the point of view of law, only individuals can be guilty. This means that individuals assume responsibilities in trials and receive penalties for crimes and not for collective guilt (Jaspers, 1947, quoted in Rosoux, 2002). It is also important to be aware that attributions of collective guilt are also a weapon in ideological struggle. Social representations of past that feed violent conflicts focus on the rumination of in-group suffering usually: a) represent or define national in-group as a victim (We, Serbians, excluded, discriminated and attacked from the Middle Age to World Wars). b) national outgroups are defined as aggressors or perpetrators and the responsibility and guilt of real or symbolic current and past injuries are attributed to these social categories (they, Croatians nazis and Muslims fascists collaborators, killed our people and commit genocide in the WWII). c) Retaliation appears as legitimate, and social representations reinforce intergroup aggressive action tendencies, war and collective violence being only a rational and justified response to past aggression of the out-groups and ingroup suffering (Rosoux, 2001b). However, in this text we analyze the role of collective guilt as part of in-group social representations of a negative past. Guilt and shame are conceived of as the emotional side of collective responsibility. These emotions are related to constructive reparative actions at actual or symbolic level. On the other hand, collective criminal guilt implies the justification of penalty and aggression towards a whole social category, because their members Dealing with collective shame and ... 63 belong to a criminal nation or because subjects were bystanders of a criminal regime. Collective guilt and shame, as feelings related to collective and not personal behaviour, are more probable in new generations unconnected to historical crimes (Rensman, 2004). At the opposite of common sense, people directly involved in collective traumatic events as perpetrators or passive bystanders, do not usually report guilt and shame and feel positive towards institutions involved in such human right violations. For instance, interviews with old guards of killing fields in Cambodia and murder gangs’ members of the Rwanda genocide, suggest that active participants did not feel guilt or regret (Hatzfeld, 2004). In the same vein, observers of immediate post-war years in Germany wrote about self-pity, fear and sadness felt by the population, but also stated that guilt was not a dominant feeling (Baier, 1988; Grosser, 1989). Only 5% of 80 Germans psychiatrist, psychologist and priest reported confessions of WW II crimes of war (Bar-On, 1989). These observations of lower feeling of guilt were confirmed by representative samples of public opinion: only 32% of a German survey in 1951 answered that Germany carried the guilt for the war. In 1967 it was 62 %. Discussion around the role of the German Army and of “normal German people” in the genocide and human right violations arise in the sixties and particularly after the seventies and eighties: it was sons asking to their parents and grandparents about what they did or not did during the WW II, in very critical manner. In the eighties and nineties most of the German population (60%) was born after WW II. A recent survey (1995) shows that German people report lowest historical proud (Do you feel proud of your nation history? Yes 8% in Germany versus 34% general mean) of 23 European, American and Asian nations. Such collective condemnation was possible because the younger generation viewed itself as different from the older generation and as unconnected to the Nazi regime and II World War and at the same time feel involved, but not committed, to collective in-group violence. Austrian and Japanese samples show a medium high level of historical proud (40% and 33%), suggesting that in these cases collective guilt and shame in part related to WW II and genocide’s in Europe and Asia exist at a lower level (UNESCO, 2000). Cultural explanations of German learning versus Japanese amnesia refer to a dichotomy between cultures of shame, focused in public image and external punition, and cultures of guilt, related to internalised self-critic (Conrad, 2003). However, this argument could not 64 Psicología Política, Nº 32, Mayo 2006 explain the case of Austria –nobody could argue that Austria is not a culture of guilt-. One plausible explanation for lower historical guilt is lower levels of institutional self-criticism in both nations facilitated by Allied political decisions: Hirohito Emperor was never judged as criminal of war despite of his involvement in Japanese Army commandment. Austria was designed as a victim of Nazi Germany in spite of high support of population to nazi’s regime and Holocaust. In Austria 6.000 war criminals were judged, but only 35 death penalty were executed, for a six millions of inhabitants – 15% belonging to Nazi organisations. Trials were larger in Germany than in Japan: in Japan, for 74 millions of inhabitants, 28 leaders and another 5.700 people were judged by war’s crimes by Allied trials, including 920 death penalties until 1951 (Grosser, 1989). In Germany, for around 80 millions of inhabitants, 21 leaders and 15.000 other war criminals were judged by Allied trials. French, British and American Governments executed 800 death penalties and probably a similar or higher toll by Russians –this means a ratio two to four times higher than in Austria and Japan. German trials judged 60.000 war criminals between 1947 and 1990 –even if only 10% of them received low strong penalties and most of old nazis became successful citizens in the German post-war (Barahona, Aguilar and Gonzalez, 2001; Bourke, 2001; Laqueur, 1985). Another related explanation could be the lower assumption of responsibilities: Japan and Austria reject responsibility of war crimes in Asia and Europe and rejected to paid in the case of Japan or paid lower reparation than Germany in the case of Austria, to their victims. These nations cope with a negative collective past by means of successful silence and denial, inducing a social representation of past that actively forgets national crimes (Olick & Levy, 1997). Even in the case of Germany, in a survey dated in 2000, only 30% agreed with a guilt statement like ”German citizens supported the nazis and were involved...”. 40% believes that German people were passive bystander and 23% that they were victims of Nazis. 51% agrees with putting a final line over past and only a minority agrees with continued debate – 41% (Langenbacher, 2003). In spite of institutional selfcriticism, trials by German judges, laws against the denial of Holocaust and crimes against the humankind, current public opinion in Germany rejects collective guilt and agrees with forgetting the negative past (Rensman, 2004). The present studies aim to analyse how group members deal with such threatening memories, from a social identity perspective, using studies of rumours, political history and experimental studies as resources to under- Dealing with collective shame and ... 65 stand this social dynamic. There is evidence that group members normatively construct recollections of relevant past events through informal communication (e.g. Halbwachs, 1992; Vansina, 1985). Informal communication may thus help structuring individual memories about the historical and actual patterns of inter-group relations (e.g. Halbwachs, 1992; Kaplan, 1982; Kimmel & Keefer, 1991; cf. also Billig, 1990; Tajfel, 1978) and we will explore this issue first. Social Identity, Rumour and Collective Memory How does informal communication help people establishing a positive social identity? Research on rumours, which we see as an instance of informal communication, may help answering this question, because crossgeneration oral transmission of informal history is one of the most important processes related to how cultures and collective memory emerge, persist and change. Rumour is a proposition for belief, passes from person to person, usually by oral transmission, without secure evidence being present. When statements refer to old times (like William Tell figure in Switzerland) rumours are alike cultural legends, they are manifestations of collective memories. Moreover, themes of many rumours are long-lived and reproduce central values and symbols of culture. Rumours usually reproduce unofficial or alternative memories, like in the case of the long-lived idea of President Kennedy murder by a ruling class conspiracy, in spite of Warren Commission official statement of an individual murder (Rosnow, 1980). Rumours are not only a manifestation of collective memory, but allow to understand informal social communication or communicative memory. Serial reproduction of rumour and information, like in classic Bartlett or Allport and Postman studies, is a paradigmatic contribution to the study of social representations of history or collective memory (Schaller & Crandall, 2004; McIntyre, Lyons, Clark and Kashima, 2004). Traditionally, rumour research focused on the factors that reinforce rumour transmission and processes through which rumours distort facts (Allport & Postman, 1947a; Difonzo, Bordia & Rosnow, 1994; Kapferer, 1987; Knapp, 1944; Ohja, 1973; Peterson & Gist, 1951; Rosnow, Esposito & Gibney, 1988). Rosnow (1991) meta-analysis found that personal anxiety, related to emotional tensions associated to the topic, is the first predictor of rumour transmission: r=.44. Our study in five European regions and five rumour also found that anxiety (how anxious do you feel when you hear the rumour for the first time?) was an important predictor of rumour transmission (meta-analytic 66 Psicología Política, Nº 32, Mayo 2006 r=.40, Paez & Marques, 1999). Probably the more stressful, fearful or negative emotion arousing the situation, the more likely it is to reinforce rumour transmission. Second predictor of rumour transmission was credulity or trust in the rumour, related to the credibility or veracity of content and source of rumour: r=.30. In our synthesis credibility or veracity (How sure you feel about the veracity of the rumour the first time you hear about it?) was also important, r=.21. Rumour, urban legends, oral stories about collective past, are more transmitted depending on whether the teller finds it trustworthy. Uncertainty or situational ambiguity is the last predictor of rumour transmission (Rosnow effect size r=.19 and our r=.21). Historical rumour flourishes in a social climate of uncertainty because it attempts to relieve the tension of cognitive unclarity. Another important predictor that appears in rumour theories is the relevance or thematic importance. Two studies found that subjects spread more unimportant rumours: rumour was more passed by subjects who perceived the topic or theme as lower rather than higher in importance. This suggests that probably rumours about topics that involve the collective self or are related to value or relevant out-comes for the in-group tend to elicit more critical examination. Finally, empirical data show that the tendency to accept or believe on a rumour increased as a function of having heard them. In our synthesis study on rumour, one of the most important predictor of rumour transmission was the number of people that tell the subject or talk with him about the rumour, r=.39 (Páez & Marques, 1999). Rumour repetition by a higher number of sources bolsters belief and supports retransmission. Concluding, based in rumour studies, transmission of informal information about past group events should be positively related to negative affect arousal, to credibility or trust in the source and perceived kernel of truth of the content and to social persuasion or number of people that share with the subject about the rumour. On the other hand, relevance is also a moderator factor – relevant topics elicit more criticism and limit rumour transmission. More interesting than establishing the factor that reinforces rumour transmission, however, is to analyse processes of information modification and their functions as an instance of informal social communication (cf. McCann & Higgins, 1990; Ng, 1990). Based on Bartlett’s (1932) analysis of memory processes, Allport and Postman (1945) argued that rumours operate through three distinct processes: (1) levelling or forgetting, i.e., the omission of information units in the course of serial transmission. (2) sharpening or selective recall, i.e. the Dealing with collective shame and ... 67 accentuation of some details and change in the structure of relationships among them as compared to the source materials and (3) assimilation or reconstruction, i.e., the modification of details, in order to increase coherence between the message and the person’s beliefs. A review of studies on serial reproduction concluded that as information is passed along chains details tend to lose, descriptions of events and groups tend to become abstracts, information tend to become stereotyped and conventionalised, following expectations, values and dominant attitudes (McIntyire et al, 2004). Omitting unfavourable details, accentuating favourable, to the detriment of unfavourable details, and reconstructing negative events under a more positive light, has been observed both in rumour transmission and in recollections of historical events (cf. Baumesteir & Hastings, 1997; Marques, Páez & Serra, 1997). 1 As a case in point, the findings by Allport and Postman (1945, 1947a, 1947b) indirectly support the idea that these processes help protecting social identity. In describing an event involving, among other things, a White’s aggression to a Black, White participants discarded most secondary details, and reversed the roles of the central characters in the course of serial transmission. In the end of the rumour-chain, the White character was portrayed as the victim, whereas the Black character was given the role of aggressor. In addition, in a survey of one thousand different rumours, Knapp (1944) found that 66% were negative rumours about out-groups. Allport and Postman processes could be associated to specific forms of coping with negative past events. a) forgetting or levelling is related to dissociation from the group and event, in terms of omission, denial and silence about traumatic collective events, b) selective recall or sharpening is related to social creativity, by reframing, psychological distancing and similar forms of coping with past negative events; c) assimilation is related to positivistic reconstruction of negative past events. These processes related to information transmission, operate well as an individual or repeated reproduction (intra-personal or personal memory) level (Herman, 1997) as well as on a social level, at a collective and inter-personal social dynamics, like serial reproduction or cross generational rumours about past events or collective memory. As an example at societal and institutional level, Rosoux (2001a) shows how official memories in Germany and France accentuate heroic narratives reinforcing proud and national cohesion. These memories emphasise past persecutions and martyrs, reinforcing fidelity to national goals and values, but conceal shameful past episodes. We will discuss these forms of coping in the framework of Social Identity Theory (SIT) and contemporary developments. 74 Psicología Política, Nº 32, Mayo 2006 collective ways of dealing with negative historical events associated to strong emotional reactions, particularly, those related to the problem of confronting past crimes and the collective learning of the truth. Acceptance of events is a first step towards the negotiation of a shared representation of the past. Acceptance of real facts, including others suffering, is essential for reconciliation, because acceptance of different meanings and pluralities of social representations about a collective catastrophe, does not imply to question the existence of a reality. What is important is to acknowledge the reality of crimes and victims, “to keep it from happening again...” but to forget the emotions of hate and not awaking ancients sufferings (Haynes, 2001; Rosoux, 2001b). First, absence of personal and collective guilt is a modal response in perpetrators of collective crimes and violence. It is not realistic to think that a majority of perpetrators should feel guilt and react with reparative and compensation behaviours towards victims. Denial, justification, and other forms of cognitive coping, allow perpetrators to share a positive collective identity and reject critics about human right violations. Only a minority feels guilt and an important group could display public guilt and shame, but only as compliance – public acceptance and private reject, as the case of Hitler’s minister Speer shows. Third generation of the perpetrators group could be more sensible and feel more guilt, shame and responsibility, than the generation involved in collective crimes. Even in this case, it is reasonable to expect the presence of “defence mechanisms” oriented towards negation, minimisation and positivistic reconstruction of criminal collective behaviour. Second, internal procedures should be more important for public opinion than external trials and procedures. In Germany, Nuremberg Trial has a lower impact on public opinion than the normal action of German justice on human right crimes (Evans, 2003). Credible leaders are more able to gain population’s adherence to social representations of past that assumes past crimes and, errors, and, furthermore, can reinforce truth and reconciliation trends –like Mandela and Archbishop Tutu in South-Africa (Rosoux, 2001 a,b). Third, groups and societies are better and more accurate remembering and evaluating collective crimes of political, ethnic, cultural and ideological out-groups, than their own criminal collective behaviour. Societies forget more their negative behaviours and also remember and emphasise more positive aspects of their history. This means that external judges, historians and witnesses should be more accurate and less reconstructive – but at the Dealing with collective shame and ... 75 same time, their opinions could be less accepted by the group of perpetrators. Fourth, when dealing with the evidence of collective negative past behaviour, people should question the credibility of the sources. If critical sources are internal and appear as constructive, people would probably engage in positivistic cognitive coping. They would minimise emotional reaction and question the relevance of events – “these are old stories, they are not important in the present”. They would also frame in-group criminal behaviour as more understandable in the historical context, attribute negative and criminal behaviour to a minority of black sheep – extreme atypical members of the nation - and minimise frequency of criminal behaviours. Official reports should be able to overcome these collective defence mechanisms. Fifth, more cohesive groups, with higher collective self-identity, should display more cognitive coping and should react more to Truth and Reparation Commissions. Subjects highly identified with national and ethnic groups should reject critics strongly, particularly by means of minimisation of the frequency of in-group human right violations. At the opposite, nations with lower level of collective self-esteem and collective proud should accept more critics and suggestions of reparation and compensatory actions. Sixth, the tendency to punish a minority of criminals could be correlated with a global positivistic reconstruction that denies the general apathy and diffuse global responsibilities – as the German case suggests. Even in this case, generations not involved in crimes could be reactive to historical critics and allow human right movement to demand truth, justice and reparation. In these cases, self-criticism by in-groups high status sources are important. 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Orsolya Vincze, University Of Pecz, Hungary Address: Darío Páez. Departamento de Psicologia Social y Metodología, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Avda. Tolosa 70, San Sebastian 20009, Spain, e-mail: