Psychology Department, Nîmes University, France.
Psychology Department, University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada.
Br J Psychol. 2018 May;109(2):362-385. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12275. Epub 2017 Nov 21.
With this work, we intended to draw a cognitive portrait of openness to reconciliation. No study had yet examined the potential contribution of high-level cognitive functioning, in addition to psychological health, to explaining attitudes towards reconciliation in societies exposed to major trauma such as post-genocide Rwanda. We measured the contribution of general cognitive capacity, analytical thinking, and subjective judgements. Our results show that higher cognitive capacity is not associated with greater openness to reconciliation. On the other hand, proneness to think analytically about the genocide predicts more favorable attitudes towards reconciliation. The latter effect is associated with more tempered judgements about retrospective facts (e.g., number of genocide perpetrators) and prospective events (e.g., risk of genocide reoccurrence). This work establishes the importance of cognitive functioning in the aftermath of political violence: A better understanding of the influence of information processing on openness to reconciliation may help improve reconciliation policies and contribute to reducing risks of conflict reoccurrence.
本研究旨在描绘出对和解的认知倾向。此前尚无研究检验高水平认知功能（除心理健康外）对解释曾经历重大创伤（如种族灭绝后的卢旺达）的社会中人们的和解态度的潜在作用。我们测量了一般认知能力、分析思维和主观判断的贡献。研究结果表明，较高的认知能力与对和解的更大开放性无关。另一方面，倾向于对种族灭绝进行分析性思考，预示着对和解的态度更为有利。后一种效应与对回溯性事实（例如种族灭绝实施者的数量）和前瞻性事件（例如种族灭绝再次发生的风险）的判断更为温和有关。这项工作确立了认知功能在政治暴力后的重要性：更好地理解信息处理对和解的影响，可能有助于改善和解政策，并有助于降低冲突再次发生的风险。
