Identity narratives and group-based emotions

Abstract

This work deals with how individuals construct national identity narratives and how these narratives are related to group-based emotions of shame and guilt. Specifically, it explores this association in situations of threat when individuals are confronted with historical wrongdoings, which menace the moral integrity of their national in-group; furthermore it investigates the relations to willingness for reconciliation and reparations.First, the content model of national narratives is outlined. Starting from a critical literature review on different forms of national attachment and on theoretical differentiations between civic and ethnic concepts of nationhood, the model is developed based on a content analytical and exploratory bottom up approach in order to cover the entire range of national identity contents in the United States and Germany (Study 1). Beside an ideology-based identity, characterized by abstract values such as freedom, and a heritage-based identity, distinguished by cultural traditions, the model identifies a conceptually new identity pattern: the formalistic identity narrative, which stands out because of its very instrumental and pragmatic approach to national identity. After the identified national narratives are replicated and validated in two experimental online-studies (partial Studies 2a and 2b), identity positioning is tested in response to historical wrongdoings, slavery in the US and the Holocaust in Germany. Intermediate results show that identity positioning and the restructuring of national narratives appear to be considered an adequate reaction towards threat in heritage-based identity dominated contexts.In a second step, this research addresses the paradox of group-identification, which describes in two competing explanations the effect of group-identification increasing respectively decreasing levels of aversive group-based emotions like shame and guilt. In this research, two different approaches were chosen by applying the content model of national narratives (identity content perspective) and by differentiating between two different forms of image shame and moral shame (emotion perspective). The results provide evidence for the notion that especially ideology-based identifiers are able to admit image-shame. They further show that identification decreases moral emotions like moral shame and guilt, whereas collective narcissism increases image-shame. Thus, the experimental studies suggest to take into account both, identity contents as well as differentiated emotional concepts, to develop a better understanding of the interplay between national narratives and emotions. The important (positive) impact of group-based shame and guilt is proven in the very last step of this thesis.The results stress that group-based emotions are able to effect the support for reconciliation and the constructive engagement with past injustice committed in the name of one’s nation.