Patrick Kanyangara

Psychosocial effects of participation in rituals of transitional justice:: A collective-level analysis and review of the literature of the effects of TRCs and trials on human rights violations in Latin America

Abstract This article examines the effects of participation in transitional justice rituals, including, for example, trials and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. These mechanisms have been designed to confront massive violations of human rights in the context of post-conflict situations and dictatorships. Truth Commissions and trials have instrumental goals of distributive justice, and serve as rituals given their marked symbolic character, helping to achieve reconciliation and the reconstruction of social norms. Evidence from South Africa and Rwanda suggests that participation in trials increases negative emotions and symptoms, and, thus, may not help to heal individual suffering. Moreover, the data from Rwanda and South Africa demonstrates that rituals also increase negative emotional climate, being costly for the society. In contrast, participants in such rituals have evidenced increased empowerment in Guatemala and South Africa, despite conditions of limited justice and reparation. Moreover, the evidence from Rwanda confirms there are some positive consequences: participation in community-based or traditional trials, known locally as Gacaca, improves intergroup relationships, decreases shame in victims, and decreases negative stereotypes and individualization of out-groups. Finally, a collective analysis of 16 Latin America nations found that trials and a successful Truth Commission provoked macrosocial benefits, reinforcing respect for human rights.

The Social Sharing of Emotions in Interpersonal and in Collective Situations: Common Psychosocial Consequences

When individuals face an emotional experience, they very generally talk about it later with people around them in an interpersonal process which has been called “the social sharing of emotion.” When groups, communities, or societies face an important collective emotional episode, they also quite generally later develop emotional expression in collective situations, such as commemorations, celebrations, religious ceremonies, and other social rituals. In both cases, a very common answer to the question of the motives underlying this need to socially share emotional experiences advocates cathartic effects of the verbal expression of emotion. Thus, lay persons as well as professionals often consider that once an emotion is shared, it vanishes. It is thought that the resulting feeling of relief would motivate people to socially share future emotional experiences. This chapter describes the studies which assessed the prediction that the mere expression of an emotion brings emotional recovery. The cathartic hypothesis was supported neither for person to person emotional sharing situations, nor for collective emotional expression. However, participants in social sharing situations reported important social benefits. We thus investigated the source of these benefits as well as the conditions under which sharing an emotion would bring actual recovery.