Emotional Response to Pictures of the Armed Conflict in Colombia

After a 5-decade armed conflict, a peace process was recently initiated in Colombia. Researchers of this conflict have frequently argued that decades of excessive mass-media exposure to conflict-related information have resulted in negative emotional outcomes in the Colombian population, which could be responsible for the observed apathy and disbelief regarding peace. Notwithstanding the relevance of these theoretical analyses, no experimental studies have explored the emotional response of the Colombian population to information depicting different types of conflict-related violence. In the present study, a well-established experimental methodology (Affective Image Visualization Paradigm; Bradley, Greenwald, & Hamm, 1993) was adapted to explore the emotional responses of college students (N= 231) to photographs depicting the Colombian armed conflict. Relevant pictures were obtained from national and international newspapers and magazines via a systematic search. The 48 selected images portrayed the 5 types of violence that characterized the Colombian armed conflict, namely massacres, terrorist attacks, raids, forced recruitment, and kidnapping/forced disappearances. The participants’ emotional experiences of the Colombian-conflict photographs were assessed across the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance. Colombian-conflict images produced strong negative affective states, similar to those elicited by unpleasant images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008). Women experienced these emotional states with more intensity than men. Images portraying massacres and terrorist attacks produced higher emotional reactivity. Lastly, perceived relation of the images to the Colombian conflict and age predicted the intensity of the negative emotional responses. Our results show that Colombian conflict–related images of the type frequently displayed in mass-media outlets overall produce aversive affective states, high arousal, and low dominance. The methodology adapted shows promise for further experimental analyses of analogous emotion-related socially relevant issues (e.g., emotion regulation and conciliation) in Colombia and other countries that have experienced intractable conflict.