Crime and Punishment: How Historical Narratives Affect the Evaluation of Restorative and Retributive Justice

Abstract

This article explores how historical narratives affect the evaluation of political decisions regarding justice during peace negotiations. Specifically, this study evaluates how different narratives of the Colombian armed conflict relate to the preference for either restorative or retributive justice. Results revealed that a historically accurate narrative that included structural elements correlated with the preference for restorative justice, whereas a schematic narrative that focused on individual greed favoured the preference for retributive justice. These results are explained in terms of the characteristics of expert historical narratives, which include structural elements, such as economic and institutional factors. The presence of these elements in the explanation of conflicts decreases the weight of individual decisions and, in this way, prevent ingroup attributional biases.