Emotional reactions to the French colonization in Algeria: The normative nature of collective guilt

Virginie Bonnot,Silvia Krauth-Gruber,Diniz Lopes,Ewa Drozda-Senkowska

doi:10.1177/0539018416661653

Abstract

Fifty years after the end of the Algerian war of independence, French colonization in Algeria (1830–1962) is still a very controversial topic when sporadically brought to the forefront of the public sphere. One way to better understand current intergroup relationships between French of French origin and French with Algerian origins is to investigate how the past influences the present. This study explores French students’ emotional reactions to this historical period, their ideological underpinnings and their relationship with the willingness to compensate for past misdeeds, and with prejudice. Results show that French students with French ascendants endorse a no-remorse norm when thinking about past colonization of Algeria and express very low levels of collective guilt and moral-outrage related emotions, especially those students with a right-wing political orientation and a national identification in the form of glorification of the country. These group-based emotions are significantly related to pro-social behavioral intentions (i.e. the willingness to compensate) and to prejudice toward the outgroup.

Highlights

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (2009, p.106) Social psychology research on colonization has shown that the way the colonial past is collectively remembered and represented affects the current relationships between formerly colonized or immigrants from former colonies and the former colonizers (Volpato & Licata, 2010)
The French colonial experience has so far been neglected in sociopsychological research and the present study aims at filling this gap and at studying more in detail the ideological factors linked to collective emotions
The aim of the present study is to examine the collective emotions this historical period is triggering in French students and whether they are linked to pro-social action intentions and prejudice

Summary

Introduction

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (2009, p.106) Social psychology research on colonization has shown that the way the colonial past is collectively remembered and represented affects the current relationships between formerly colonized or immigrants from former colonies and the former colonizers (Volpato & Licata, 2010). The French colonial experience has so far been neglected in sociopsychological research and the present study aims at filling this gap and at studying more in detail the ideological factors linked to collective emotions. During the colonial period, colonized people had been the target of workforce exploitation, massive land expropriations leading to the destruction of rural world ( dramatically reducing the local political influence of the indigenous), and marginalization in town It was not until after World War Two that the indigenous colonized inhabitants were granted French citizenship they were still treated differently by being officially called FrenchAlgerian Muslims. The aim of the present study is to examine the collective emotions this historical period is triggering in French students and whether they are linked to pro-social action intentions and prejudice. One way of reconciling the conflicting results concerning the identification-emotion link is to consider identification not as an unitary construct but as a twofold concept (Roccas, Klar and Liviatan, 2006)

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