Contempt after a long- lasting denial of in-group crimes: Exploring first reactions and self-assessed emotions to historical narratives,

Although committed more than 70 years ago, colonial crimes of the Italian Army during the invasion of Ethiopia were clearly described in history textbooks only recently (Leone & Mastrovito, 2010; Cajani, 2013). Apart from history teaching, other sources of social discourse usually keep silent on these troubling memories. Therefore, current Italian history textbooks break a widespread literal denial (Cohen, 2001), lasting from several generations. We propose that in this case historical narratives may be seen as parrhesiastic communications (Foucault, 2001), since they empower young generations' understanding of their historical pre-existence (Ortega y Gasset, 1930) but expose them to strong emotional reactions (Cajani & Leone, 2014). To explore these reactions, 48 university students, covertly videotaped, were invited to read historical texts of in-group colonial crimes. Each student read the narrative being alone in the room. After reading, participants wrote a list of first thoughts linked to the text and self-assessed their emotions on Italian colonial past, rating each emotion according to a pre-arranged list of labels. A week later, before being debriefed, participants were invited to recollect the text they received (incidental memory) and to self-assess once again their emotions on in-group colonial past. Interestingly, participants (observed by FACS, Ekman & Friesen, 1986) firstly reacted to reading showing not only surprise and doubt, due to the novelty of information, but also contempt. We think that it is important to integrate direct observation of this specific expression, that is the only first reaction related to moral judgment, to subsequent self-assessments of moral self-conscious emotions.