How Can Memories of Past In-Group Crimes Be Integrated in Positive National Identity? A Study on Effects of Narratives of Italian Colonial Wars on Young Participants and of Co-Variation of These Effects with the Participants’ Level of National Identification with Being Italian

The paper presents a study on effects of narratives of Italian colonial wars on 103 Italian university students, as well as co-variations of these effects according to the participants’ level of national identification. Results show that, being the Italian students in a situation of amnesia about colonial wrong-doings of their in-group, a detailed and matter-of-fact narrative of these war crimes causes a significant heightening of their emotional reactions due to the knowledge of these events. Moreover, also willingness to help the group of former victims becomes significantly higher only when participants are exposed to clear, factual knowledge. Instead, no significant change in the feeling of being guilty by association is shown in young participants exposed to either kind of narrative. Identity is not related to these emotional changes, except for a diminishing degree of the feeling of being proud and glad to be part of one’s own national group when reading a story that brushes over past in-group wrong-doings. These results seem to suggest that a more detailed and factual narrative of past crimes of the in-group may help to elaborate negative emotions related to these events, without interfering with identification with the national group.