Narrative Communication: How Sending and Receiving Impact Statements on Past Ingroup Suffering Influences Conflict Attitudes

• Main Author: Burrows, Brooke
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2021
• Subjects: intergroup conflict; victim narratives; empowerment; meaning; conflict attitudes; memorials; International Relations; Personality and Social Contexts; Psychology; Social Psychology
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/1124; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2131&context=masters_theses_2

In the aftermath of mass violence or harm perpetrated against one group by another, commemoration or memorialization processes held by the victim group are often a space in which narratives of impact and suffering are expressed and shared. While there may be no formal or direct calls for justice or policy during these commemoration processes, prior research indicates that such public forums, ranging from truth commissions to museum exhibits, may have diverse impacts on individual emotions as well as attitudes towards the broader conflict implicated (Humphrey, 2000; Reeves & Heath-Kelly, 2020). The current work proposes a closer examination of such intragroup commemoration processes for reflecting and sharing statements of ingroup suffering, specifically examining the possibility that intragroup communication of victim narratives can lead to a range of conflict perpetuating and conflict resolution attitudes, dependent on the type of narrative communication and subsequently evoked emotions. Across three studies, the research explores how sending and receiving ingroup victim narratives across both private and public contexts can lead to divergent emotional experiences, and thus divergent outcomes for intergroup conflict related attitudes. Study 1, a quasi-experiment found that the relationship between feelings of empowerment and peaceful conflict resolution attitudes was strengthened for Americans who reflected on the impact of 9/11 during its commemoration day in contrast to a non-commemorative day, just as the association of meaning derived from conflict with conflict perpetuating attitudes was also strengthened. Study 2 experimentally manipulated the public process of sending narrative communication, in contrast to private reflection, and demonstrated that the public context significantly increased both feelings of empowerment and meaning derived from conflict and replicated the downstream impacts on conflict attitudes of Study 1. Finally, Study 3 extended these findings by adding a receiving component to the narrative communication, which resulted in higher levels of ingroup identity, as well as lower levels of peaceful conflict resolution support. Together, these three studies help to illustrate the complexity of both the psychological processes and resultant conflict attitudes that can arise from communicating narratives of ingroup suffering.