Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Close Or Distant Past? The Role Of Temporal Distance In Responses To Intergroup Violence From Victim And Perpetrator Perspectives, Mengyao Li

Doctoral Dissertations

As time distances people from moral transgressions, do affected parties experience a lingering need for addressing the past, or does the need gradually fade away over time? Do people perceive time differently depending on whether the ingroup has committed or suffered the transgression? In two different intergroup contexts, we investigate the role of temporal distance in attitudes toward justice and reconciliation after moral transgressions from the perspectives of both victim and perpetrator groups. In the context of the conflict between Serbs and Bosniaks, Study 1 showed that temporal distance from intergroup transgressions predicted different reactions to the transgression between victim …