Overcoming collective violence and increasing peaceful coexistence: Emotional and attitudinal effects of victims’ narratives.

The study analyzes the role of victims in postconflict societies affected by collective violence. We propose that when narratives adopt positive attitudes toward reconstructing peaceful intergroup coexistence, they evoke profound emotions in the general population that foster forgiveness and social reconciliation. Two studies (Colombia N1 = 110, Mage = 20.9; Spain N2 = 259, Mage = 20.6) evaluated the impact of different victim narratives (victimization + commitment condition; victimization condition; commitment condition) and compared them with the statistical–informative condition. Results show that in the victimization + commitment condition, individuals display higher intergroup forgiveness and transcendent emotions, which in turn predicts more forgiveness. The results support the need to make victims’ suffering visible, alongside narratives of the reconstruction of social cohesion, to change the general population’s attitudes through an emotional pathway.