Justifying wartime atrocities alters memories

Same kind of psychological mechanism enables climate change denialism.

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 15-May-2014
Contact: B. Rose Huber
Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Justifying wartime atrocities alters memories

PRINCETON, N.J.—Stories about wartime atrocities and torture methods, like waterboarding and beatings, often include justifications – despite whether the rationale is legitimate.

Now, a study by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School shows how those justifications actually creep into people's memories of war, excusing the actions of their side. The researchers report in Psychological Science shows how Americans' motivation to remember information that absolves American soldiers of atrocities alters their memories.

"People are motivated to remember information that morally disengages them," said lead author Alin Coman, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at the Wilson School. "By doing so, they can absolve themselves or their group from responsibility."

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The findings have implications for both policy and journalism, Coman said.

"In terms of policy, it's important to acknowledge that the way you remember the past is guiding your decisions, the way you vote and who you support. While this study didn't analyze political behavior, the general finding could have overtones in the political domain, from political campaigning to ethnic conflict."

"In terms of journalistic reporting, journalists need to decide how to report information from wartime situations," Coman said. "Do they include both atrocities and justifications? How can they better report these situations so they aren't creating conditions for these biases to emerge?"

Coman and his students are currently working on a project investigating the effects of socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting, a phenomenon by which individuals synchronize their memories as a result of the conversations they have with one another. In the current study, Princeton students are listening to other Princeton students – as well as students from Yale – remember stories about their own groups.