Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

Transitional Justice Processes, Shared Narrative Memory about Past Collective Violence and ReconciliationManuel Cárdenas, Darío Páez & Bernard Riméitem: “Would you say that you: Strongly approve what the NCTR has done / Somewhatapprove/ Somewhat disapprove/ Strongly disapprove”. A similar item was then proposedwith regard to the CNPT. In view of the consistency of the answers (α = .92), the two itemswere averaged.Evaluation of the Commissions’ outcomes. Four major aims of the commissionswere then submitted to an evaluation through the following items: «The NCTR is oftensaid to have several important jobs. Would you say that it has done an excellent job/prettygood job/pretty bad job/poor job: (1) “Letting families know what happened to their lovedones” (i.e., aim of providing truth about victims), (2) “Helping to create an inclusive historyintegrating the ‘two nations’ or opposed groups in a common narrative” (aim of creating acomprehensive history), (3) “Helping that perpetrators would be brought to judgment” (aimof punishment of those who are guilty) and (4) “Ensuring that human rights abuses will nothappen again in the country” (aim of guaranteeing that it will not happen again)». Items 1, 3and 4 were repeated with reference to the NCPPT. Response options ranged from 1 = “Poorjob” to 4 = “Excellent job”. A global evaluation index was computed from answers to these 7items, (α =.89).Evaluation of the State’s apologies. Three questions adopted from Echebarría et al.(2010) then assessed respondents’ views on (1) the sincerity of the State’s apology “Do youconsider the President’s apology and message about NCTR as sincere”, (2) its effectivenessfor improving empathy “Do you consider that the President’s apology and message aboutNCTR strengthen intergroup empathy, helping to understand other’s suffering”, (3) its effectivenessfor promoting inter-group trust “Do you think that the President’s apology andmessage about NCTR reinforce trust between groups”. The response options ranged ineach case from 1 = “Not at all/None” to 4 = “A great deal”. A general index assessing apologysincerity and effectiveness was created. Reliability was satisfactory (α =.82).Belief in social forgiveness. A question was drawn up to assess social forgiveness(Mullet et al., 2011; Kadima & Mullet, 2007): “With respect to the period of past nationalcollective violence, do you consider that people who were affected by past violence canforgive those who inflicted them this violence?” Response options ranged from 1 = “Not atall” to 7 = “Completely”.Disposition to social remembering. Two items (adapted from Gibson, 2004) examinedrespondents’ respective dispositions to social remembering and to forgetting. “We are interestedin your opinion about the following two statements regarding this country’s past”: (1).“When it comes to this nation’s past, we must learn from the mistakes that were made inorder to avoid making the same mistake again”; (2) “It’s better not to open old wounds bytalking about what happened in the past”. A response scale from “Completely false” (1) to“Completely true” (4) was used.Perceived socio-emotional climatePositive Negative Emotional Climate (CEPN). Respondents’ perception of the socioemotionalclimate of their country was assessed using two different instruments. First,four items extracted from the Positive Negative Emotional Climate scale (Páez, Ruiz, Gailly,Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches66