Scholars from various disciplines suggest that government apologies for historical injustices fulfill important psychological goals. After reviewing psychological literature that contributes to this discussion, we present a list of elements that political apologies should contain to be acceptable to both members of the victimized minority and the nonvictimized majority. Content coding of a list of government apologies revealed that many, but not all, include most of these elements. We then reviewed research demonstrating that political apologies that contain most of these facets are favorably evaluated, but especially by members of the nonvictimized majority. Next, we examined how the demands of victimized minorities affect their satisfaction with government apologies that lack some components. We conclude by discussing the implications of our analysis for when and how governments should apologize.Throughout history, governments of many countries have committed deliberate discriminatory acts against minorities, ranging from unfair taxes to slavery and mass murder. These government actions were often legal, approved by legislatures and courts as well as the majority of citizens. In retrospect, these actions seem unjust, but what, if anything, should current governments do about them? Sometimes governments respond to charges of historical injustice by downplaying the magnitude of the harm or even denying that the events occurred. For example, despite frequent requests that it acknowledge and apologize for the Armenian

It has been recently proposed that people can flexibly rely on sources of control that are both internal and external to the self to satisfy the need to believe that their world is under control (i.e., that events do not unfold randomly or haphazardly). Consistent with this, past research demonstrates that, when personal control is threatened, people defend external systems of control, such as God and government. This theoretical perspective also suggests that belief in God and support for governmental systems, although seemingly disparate, will exhibit a hydraulic relationship with one another. Using both experimental and longitudinal designs in Eastern and Western cultures, the authors demonstrate that experimental manipulations or naturally occurring events (e.g., electoral instability) that lower faith in one of these external systems (e.g., the government) lead to subsequent increases in faith in the other (e.g., God). In addition, mediation and moderation analyses suggest that specific concerns with order and structure underlie these hydraulic effects. Implications for the psychological, sociocultural, and sociopolitical underpinnings of religious faith, as well as system justification theory, are discussed.

Older (mean age = 74.23) and younger (mean age = 33.50) participants recalled items from 6 briefly exposed household scenes either alone or with their spouses. Collaborative recall was compared with the pooled, nonredundant recall of spouses remembering alone (nominal groups). The authors examined hits, self-generated false memories, and false memories produced by another person's (actually a computer program's) misleading recollections. Older adults reported fewer hits and more self-generated false memories than younger adults. Relative to nominal groups, older and younger collaborating groups reported fewer hits and fewer self-generated false memories. Collaboration also reduced older people's computer-initiated false memories. The memory conversations in the collaborative groups were analyzed for evidence that collaboration inhibits the production of errors and/or promotes quality control processes that detect and eliminate errors. Only older adults inhibited the production of wrong answers, but both age groups eliminated errors during their discussions. The partners played an important role in helping rememberers discard false memories in older and younger couples. The results support the use of collaboration to reduce false recall in both younger and older adults.

Governments and political groups around the world are increasingly offering apologies to atone for past injustices. In recent years social psychologists have begun to empirically explore whether these apologies improve intergroup relations. We organize this literature into a framework outlining potential outcomes of intergroup apologies, mediators of those outcomes, and circumstances that allow those outcomes to be realized. Psychologists have focused most of their efforts around the questions of whether and when intergroup apologies elicit forgiveness and foster positive intergroup attitudes. Thus, in addition to outlining the present state of knowledge on intergroup apologies, this framework highlights areas that require further research; most notably, the model makes evident that we know little about what psychological states mediate intergroup apology effects.

In the legal literature, "privity" refers to the link between a minority's current social, psychological, and economic problems and its previous mistreatment by the government. Scholars speculate that judgments of privity underlie support for redress for historical injustices. There is no gold standard for evaluating privity, however, and its assessment is susceptible to personal and situational influences. We conducted three studies to examine how liberal-conservative ideology interacts with group membership to predict judgments of privity and support for redress. This research is the first to examine the combined effects of liberal-conservative ideology and group membership among respondents who belong to previously victimized minorities. Across both actual and hypothetical injustices, increasing conservatism was inversely related to judgments of privity, except when respondents were members of the victimized group. Victimized group members claimed privity regardless of ideology. The effects on support for reparations paralleled those for privity with one exception involving African Americans (Study 2). We discuss the implications of the findings for understanding the nature of liberalism-conservatism. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.When discussing government redress for historical injustices, 1 legal scholars sometimes use the term "privity" to refer to a direct link between a group's current troubles (e.g., economic and social) and its earlier mistreatment. Scholars argue that popular support for redress increases if its advocates can demonstrate privity (Brooks, 1999;Matsuda, 1987;Starzyk & Ross, 2008). It is difficult, however, to offer indisputable evidence of privity when the injustices occurred in the past (Patterson, 1982(Patterson, , 2004. The connection between earlier injustices and a group's present disadvantages is obscured by the passage of time and intervening events. Even people who agree that a currently disadvantaged minority was unfairly victimized in the past can disagree about the causal link between the past injustice and the group's present hardships. In the absence of an unequivocal standard for establishing privity, its assessment becomes a judgment susceptible to dispositional and situational influences. In the current article, we examine two potentially important influences on estimates of privity, liberal-conservative political ideology, and group membership.Despite the difficulty of establishing the presence or absence of privity, people often voice strong opinions. Advocates and opponents of privity point to the absurdity of beliefs that conflict with their own (e.g., Robinson, 2001). Such disagreements are psychologically important because they can contribute to intergroup misunderstanding and conflict (Augoustinos & LeCouteur, 2004). Past research and theorizing connect liberal-conservative ideology and group membership to judgments of privity. Increasing conservatism is associated with a tendency to downplay the association between past injustices and the curren...