“Righting the wrong”:A multicountry study on people’s perceptions of “making things right” in the wake of human rights violations.

More and more academics and policy makers advocate that countries ought to deal with past human rights violations. In this article, we explore whether people across the world agree with this normative expectation, and if so, what they think should be done to “make things right” and why. Our overarching objective was to see whether we can observe any universal patterns or common themes in this regard or whether people’s ideas and intuitions are primarily subject to cross-country variation. Through 283 interviews conducted in Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States, we found that people largely share the belief that countries should deal with past transgressions, and that they see this as a multidimensional process that includes multiple measures that help ensure security and stability, restore harmony and peace, as well as meet other collective economic, social, and moral needs. Our findings also suggest, however, that people’s ideas about the specific measures that should be part of this process are at least partially shaped by the local social, economic, cultural, and political context as well. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved

“Righting the wrong”:A multicountry study on people’s perceptions of “making things right” in the wake of human rights violations.

More and more academics and policy makers advocate that countries ought to deal with past human rights violations. In this article, we explore whether people across the world agree with this normative expectation, and if so, what they think should be done to “make things right” and why. Our overarching objective was to see whether we can observe any universal patterns or common themes in this regard or whether people’s ideas and intuitions are primarily subject to cross-country variation. Through 283 interviews conducted in Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States, we found that people largely share the belief that countries should deal with past transgressions, and that they see this as a multidimensional process that includes multiple measures that help ensure security and stability, restore harmony and peace, as well as meet other collective economic, social, and moral needs. Our findings also suggest, however, that people’s ideas about the specific measures that should be part of this process are at least partially shaped by the local social, economic, cultural, and political context as well. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved