The Emotion Dynamics of Transitional Justice: An Emotion Sharing Perspective

Great Expectations: Emotions and Transitional Justice

During the past decades, transitional justice (TJ) procedures in the wake of mass atrocities have proliferated across the globe (Karstedt, 2012). According to the United Nations Report of the Secretary General on Transitional Justice, TJ comprises “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempts to come to terms with the legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation” (United Nations Security Council, 2004, p. 4). These procedures include criminal procedures before national, hybrid, and international tribunals and courts, civil and redress procedures for victims, lustration (purges of implicated personnel in the state bureaucracy), amnesties, and truth and reconciliation commissions (TRC).

TJ procedures comprise a considerable variety of legal fora on domestic and international levels (Olsen, Payne, & Reiter, 2010). These range from criminal courts proper to courtlike bodies like truth commissions that aim at establishing the (historical) facts and evidence about human rights abuses of past regimes (e.g., in Guatemala). The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA TRC) was the first to combine the truth process with amnesties for perpetrators. ¹ The hybrid court of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) allows for participation of victims as civil parties. The gacaca courts in Rwanda are informal local community courts which were modelled on traditional justice procedures, and are situated in the local communities of victims and perpetrators. ²

Without exception emotions are a salient feature in all types of legal fora of TJ. The events and crimes elicit moral outrage (Martin, 2009); victims and witnesses give voice to their experiences of trauma, anger, hatred, and fear. Emotions of victims and defendants are elicited and expressed during and as part of procedures, including sadness, anger, and hatred on the part of victims, and shame, guilt, and remorse among the perpetrators (Gobodo-Madikizela, 2002). The emotions of judges, lawyers, and audiences present at these procedures (e.g., postwar Belgium; Elster, 2004, p. 216), and of “sympathetic witnesses” and “listeners” (Minow, 1998) add to the emotional dynamics of transitional justice procedures. Forgiveness as an “emotional practice” (Jeffery, 2008, p. 180) is part of contemporary TJ procedures, in criminal trials as well as in TRCs.

Contemporary TJ procedures do more than just acknowledge the salience of emotions. Rather emotions have become an essential justification for its aims, objectives, and ultimately achievements. TJ has adopted a language of emotional healing rather than the language of justice, as Minow (1998, p. 327) observed early on. In this vein, truth telling, accountability, and justice (Doak, 2011) are seen as mechanisms whose foremost role is to lead to emotional recovery and healing of individual victims. Further, the hope is that these mechanisms will initiate a change in the emotional climate and process of healing in postconflict societies as these societies emerge from a history of mass atrocities (Mendeloff, 2009, p. 598). On the one hand, contemporary TJ procedures give unprecedented space to the expression of emotions, the open display of emotions, and to often highly emotional statements by victims and perpetrators. On the other hand, emotions are “regulated” and subject to the requirements of the legal settings and procedures (Maroney & Gross, 2014).

Notwithstanding a growing body of research, there is currently little empirical data that suggests that such outcomes can actually be delivered by TJ procedures of any type. After conducting a comprehensive review of empirical studies on the topic, Doak (2011, p. 275) states: “Precisely how the truth acts to transform negative emotions is still unknown.” Studies of victim- witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) give little unambiguous support to the impact of truth-telling, accountability, and justice on the emotional healing of victims (Biro et al., 2004; Stover, 2004). Similar results are obtained for the SA TRC (Kaminer, Stein, Mbanga, & Zungu-Dirwayi, 2001; Mendeloff, 2009). For most victims, giving evidence and truth-telling is experienced as involving considerable emotional pain; this applies to participants in the SA TRC (Byrne, 2004, p. 243ff.) as well as to those in local gacaca courts that dealt with the genocide in Rwanda (Brounéus, 2008; Rimé, Kanyangara, Yzerbet, & Paez, 2011).

An analysis by clinical psychologist O’Connell (2005) which draws on forensic psychological studies, interviews with therapists who counselled survivors, and the evidence from TJ fora, found conflicting and contradictory evidence for the psychological and emotional well-being of victims of severe human rights abuses (mostly torture) who were involved in criminal and civil claims against perpetrators. Mendeloff (2009, p. 596), who conducted the most extensive meta-analysis, concludes that all studies concur in their findings that TJ has little impact on victims’ emotional well-being, whether they participate or not. Given that victims of massive human rights abuses suffer from multiple traumas, it is likely “that post-conflict truth-telling mechanisms … have even less of a beneficial impact …. [and] psychological benefit” (2009, p. 614).

Claims as to the impact of TJ on the emotional climate of postconflict societies likewise receive mixed support. The majority of survivors in former Yugoslavia were dissatisfied with the TJ process (Bașoğlu et al., 2005). Two related studies of the local gacaca courts in Rwanda show that both victims and perpetrators rated the emotional climate in their communities as more negative after participating (Kanyangara, Rimé, Philippot, & Yzerbet, 2007; Rimé et al., 2011).

These findings are surprisingly consistent across different types of international and domestic trials, as well as truth commissions. All types are equally unlikely to achieve what they are claimed to do, either for individual victims or for the postconflict society (Mendeloff, 2009, p. 616; Stover, 2005, p. 15). Which underlying processes and uniform mechanisms are functional in generating these consistent outcomes? In order to achieve a better and more systematic understanding of the emotion dynamics in these processes and mechanisms, I advance a framework of “emotion sharing” developed in social psychology (for an overview see Rimé, 2009). It has only recently been applied to domestic legal settings (Lens et al., 2015) and to postconflict settings more generally (Stockwell, 2014). This framework will help to shed light on the reality of emotion sharing within TJ settings, and to unravel the impact of processes of emotion sharing on victims, witnesses, and perpetrators. In sum, it will help us to understand where the promise of emotional healing might be plausible or not, and under what circumstances. The following issues essential for the theory and practice of TJ are discussed in the light of findings of research on emotion sharing: the type of emotions shared and reactions of the targets of sharing; the sharing of particularly traumatic experiences and “negative” emotions; and the impact on emotional recovery and healing.

Processes and Mechanisms of Emotion Sharing

Emotions have long-lasting cognitive and social consequences in individuals (Rimé, 2009, p. 62). The social sharing of emotion is a natural condition of social life; people share emotions independent of age and gender, education, status, and cultural practices. Emotion sharing is initiated early after an episode, however the need for sharing lasts as long as the memory of the emotion maintains its impact (Rimé, 2009, p. 71). Emotions are mainly shared within close social circles (Rimé, Mesquita, Philippot, & Boca, 1991). Sharing affects the individual who experienced the emotion and those who are the recipients (“targets”) of the shared emotion.

Individuals share all types of emotions, both “positive” and “negative” emotions. Negative emotions are elicited by loss, threats, and other aversive stimuli, and include anger, fear, sadness, but also shame and guilt (Izard & King, 2009, p. 117); anxiety and depression are also in this category (Plutchik, 1994, p. 109). Sadness, vengeance, and anger are shared as much as happiness and joy (Rimé, 2009, p. 67), and the experience of sharing even very negative emotions is not seen as aversive or painful by a majority of subjects (Rimé et al., 1991). Traumatic emotional experiences are frequently shared, and victims express a need to do so.

The social sharing of emotions ripples through an individual’s closer and more distant social circles, and leads on to emotional reactions among those with whom emotions are shared (targets of sharing; Rimé, 2009, pp. 71–74). Generally two types of reactions from listeners are identified. Socioaffective reactions are often nonverbal, and offer emotional support like comfort, consolation, empathy, and bonding; they convey recognition and validation of the suffering and emotional experience (Rimé, 2009, p. 62, 75f.). Emotion sharing initially favours “socioaffective responses,” and the demands of the person sharing and the responses of the listeners concur (Rimé, 2009, p. 76). Listeners’ socioaffective responses increase with the intensity of the episode and related emotions, in particular their nonverbal responses. Cognitive responses in contrast aim at reframing the emotional experience, at a reappraisal of the episode and ultimately at adaptation of goals in the narrator. They thus stimulate cognitive responses to the emotional distress in the narrator; efforts to cope with the situation and address the emotional distress, and in particular to regain control (Lepore, Fernandez-Berrocal, Ragan, & Ramos, 2004; Rimé, 2009).

Sharing emotions has immediate impact on both the narrator and the target. It generates stronger bonds between the narrator and the audience, and can enhance a person’s social integration into groups and wider social circles (Espitalier, Tcherkassof, & Delmas, 2002). This might explain why people feel spontaneously relieved after sharing their emotions, and generally benefit from sharing, as feelings of insecurity, loneliness, and helplessness are alleviated (Zech & Rimé, 2005). Sharing thus has the potential to reduce distress caused by emotions: it enhances the comprehension of emotional experiences, protects individuals from the emotional impact of situations, and addresses immediate needs of the person experiencing (negative) emotions for comfort and consolation (Rimé, 2009, p. 75).

Translating this general model of emotion sharing to the real-world context of TJ first lends support to a number of claims and features of TJ settings. However, attention to the limitations imposed by the legal setting itself as well as to limitations and qualifications of the general model is also required. Limitations particularly critical for TJ settings concern the type of emotions and traumatic experiences shared between victims, perpetrators, and audiences; the mode of reaction—whether socioaffective or cognitive—and the impact on emotional recovery and healing.

The Legal Setting as Real-World Context: Supporting and Limiting Factors

In principle, the general processes, mechanisms, and outcomes of emotion sharing largely support the role that TJ assigns to the presence of victims, their statements, and their expressions of emotions. Reports from the courtrooms of international tribunals and from truth commissions provide compelling examples of how victims or perpetrators perceive TJ procedures as a space to share emotions, and actively engage in the process (Jeffery, 2014, p. 45; Minow, 1998, p. 331; Stover, 2004, p. 106; Stover, Balthazard, & Koenig, 2011). Most of the emotions shared in TJ procedures are “negative emotions,” which instigate social interaction by story-telling and conversation (Rimé, 2009, p. 62, 75ff.). Victims are motivated by the search for emotional support like meaning, recognition, and validation. In principle, the legal setting of a criminal trial is not inimical to the recognition and validation of victims’ suffering. The framework of emotion sharing thus generally corroborates initially high hopes and optimism of victims who look forward to sharing their stories in courts as well as in truth commissions, and accounts for their reports of initial relief (e.g., in the SA TRC, Gobodo-Madikizela, 2002). The social-integrative function of emotion sharing might also be decisive for changing perceptions between victims’ and perpetrators’ groups, as observed for participants at the community gacaca courts in Rwanda (Kanyangara et al., 2007).

On the other hand, the legal setting obviously constrains the preponderant socioaffective mode of responses, and thus disappoints victims’ expectations. Clearly in all courts, but even in truth commissions, judges, chairs, and other legal personnel are restricted with regard to the expression of emotions (Maroney & Gross, 2014). Victims who testified in courts mostly felt that their initially high hopes had been thwarted, and sharing their emotions was not met with appropriate responses or fell on deaf ears (Human Rights Center, 2014, p. 49; Stover, 2004).

TJ fora differ with regard to general and specific features that are conducive to emotion sharing or restrain it. Thus, the SA TRC was exemplary in encouraging the sharing of emotions, and documentaries provide evidence of emotional reactions from all present. This might account for victims’ reports of initial relief, and feelings of being recognized. Likewise, the presence and involvement of a large group of victims, as for example at the ECCC in Cambodia, seem to provide an environment where socioaffective responses can flourish, and therefore account for higher levels of satisfaction among victims (Stover et al., 2011). In contrast, the audiences in the gacaca courts represented divided communities, with nonsympathetic and inimical listeners from the perpetrator group creating a situation in which the sharing of emotions became a negative emotional experience for the victim. Women who testified in local gacaca courts in Rwanda were utterly distressed, angered, and scared by negative and stigmatizing reactions from the audience and the denial of recognition of their plight (Brounéus, 2008).

A Built-In Dilemma: Emotion Sharing Between Victims and Perpetrators

TJ deals with perpetrators who committed horrific crimes and were involved in massive abuse and atrocities, and with victims who suffer from multiple traumatic experiences. Victims come with anger, sadness, and memories of traumatic emotional experiences, while perpetrators might be angry, but also feel shame and guilt. TJ fora thus are spaces where extremely negative emotions and distressing experiences are shared between members of antagonistic groups, and with potentially divided audiences. Accordingly, TJ fora condition the general mechanisms of emotion sharing, with specific qualifications and limitations for intense traumatic experiences and the sharing of guilt and shame.

As noted, traumatic emotions are frequently shared, and most trauma victims express a need to share their experience. Generally, there are no differences in sharing between those who have experienced intense trauma and those who have not (for an overview see Rimé, 2009, p. 68f.). However, those with the most intensive symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were more reluctant about sharing all emotional aspects of their experience, and in particular did not want to share the most distressing ones. In addition, the socioaffective mode of response is suspended for extremely distressing situations. When listeners are confronted with such extreme trauma, atrocious events, or severe illness, they react with less empathy and even attempt to constrain the victim in the expression of emotions (Rimé, 2009, p. 69). Bystanders and nonvictims severely underestimate the victim’s situation, react with anxiety and respond with simplistic interventions that cannot do justice to the complex consequences of the negative emotional experience (Rimé, 2009, p. 76).

Perpetrators are even more restrained in sharing their emotions of shame and guilt. Both emotions are defined as “self-conscious emotions,” based on the observation that they make individuals wish to hide and disappear (Lewis, 2000). Individuals tend not to share events that elicit feelings of shame and guilt, and in particular they keep secret those experiences that involve a greater responsibility for the event (Finkenauer & Rimé, 1998a).

These limitations on the sharing of traumatic emotions seemingly account for the general and widespread disappointment among victims and survivors, whether participating in TJ fora or not. The overall lack of socioaffective responses might drive the strong and nearly universal feelings of anger and disappointment with which many victim-witnesses walk away (Mendeloff, 2009, p. 605). For victims who suffer from high levels of trauma, feelings of anger, loneliness, and loss often prevail (e.g., ICTY; Bașoğlu et al., 2005), a finding that is confirmed for victims of severe violence in domestic courts (Lens et al., 2015). Survivors of a massacre in Guatemala who testified in a trial of the perpetrators report that even in their small community there was little support and empathy from their own group (Lykes, Beristain, & Cabrera Perez-Arminan, 2007, p. 378). Brounéus (2008, p. 69f.) reports several cases of women who, after having given highly emotional testimony of their trauma, were neither visited nor looked after by others who had been present at the local gacaca court.

Particular disappointment among victims might be related to the perpetrator’s reluctance to show or share emotions of shame and guilt, even if perpetrators experience these. Such disappointment might also translate into the widely reported perceptions of leniency and impunity for the perpetrator, and thus the feeling that the traumatic experiences have not been recognized and validated (Bașoğlu et al., 2005; Stover, 2004).

The disjunction in the sharing of emotions between victims, who are reticent to give voice to the most distressing traumatic experiences, and perpetrators, who withhold expressions of shame and guilt, become particularly visible in what Jeffery (2014) describes as the “forgiveness dilemma.” Victims are demanding that expressions of guilt, remorse, and shame are authentic and true emotions. Rituals of apologies are rejected (Jeffery, 2011), as are purely instrumental apologies (Subotić, 2012). Victims of gross human rights violations in South Africa, whether they had participated in the TRC proceedings or not, and whether they had given public or closed testimony to a TRC investigator, were not willing to forgive when only guilt was admitted, or an apology made by the perpetrator. They needed to see “true sorriness” from the perpetrator (Allan, Allan, Kaminer, & Stein, 2006). Those who had given public testimony were most divided, and tended to be either very forgiving or very unforgiving. Those with little intention to forgive also suffered from the highest levels of trauma (Kaminer et al., 2001). The gap between perpetrators, who will hardly fully share their emotions of guilt and shame, and traumatized victims, who are unable to share the full amount of their emotional distress, constitutes a built-in dilemma for TJ procedures.

The Impact of Emotion Sharing: Emotional Relief and Recovery

It is one of the strongest claims and justifications of TJ that participation in TJ procedures, truth telling, and testimony, that is, the sharing of traumatic emotional experiences, leads to emotional relief, long-term emotional recovery, and “healing” of victims. In light of empirical research on emotion sharing such strong claims are unsustainable. Research provides consistent evidence that merely talking about or sharing an emotional experience does not resolve it or lead to emotional recovery (Finkenauer & Rimé, 1998b; Rimé, 2009, p. 77ff.). Narrators expect and initially feel relief when sharing emotions (Zech & Rimé, 2005). Notwithstanding a sense of spontaneous relief, there is no evidence that initial sharing starts a process of recovery or healing nor does repetitive sharing. A longitudinal study (Curci & Rimé, 2012, p. 1411) showed that actually the “prolongation of sharing of emotions is a maladaptive outcome and a poor recovery is a direct consequence of self-perpetuating sharing.”

Consequently, truth telling and testimony are highly unlikely to contribute to the emotional recovery of victims; this applies to those who participated in TJ procedures as well as to survivors in postconflict societies generally (e.g., ICTY; Mendeloff, 2009, p. 605). Further, the emotional reactivation of the episode might elicit negative emotions in participants. Rimé et al. (2011, p. 703) found for both perpetrators and victims participating in gacaca courts a “considerable increase in fear, sadness and anxiety.” For victims, a sharp increase in symptoms of trauma rather than recovery was observed. Such a lack of impact has also been observed in more mundane legal settings. A study on court statements by victims of serious crimes confirms that the sharing of emotions did not change feelings of anger nor anxiety among the victims (Lens et al., 2015, p. 30). In sum, there is no foundation for the assumption that a “single-shot expression of emotions” (Lens et al., 2015, p. 30) can contribute to the diminishing of emotional trauma, either in a legal setting or elsewhere.

However, research demonstrates that modes of response, rather than the mere expression of emotions, are decisive for emotional recovery. Besides socioaffective responses, narrators also expect cognitive responses that help them to reframe and reappraise the emotionally distressful event, and thus to start a process of emotional recovery (Rimé, 2009). A comparison of the impact of socioaffective and cognitive modes of responses found that “sharing situations which prompt cognitive responses can produce the recovery effect” that mere social sharing and a predominance of socioaffective responses by listeners fail to generate (Rimé, 2009, p. 80). Emotional recovery cannot be achieved by socioaffective responses alone (Rimé, 2009, p. 79), and a sequence of responses that starts with socioaffective responses followed by cognitive responses can best help victims to cope with the emotional crisis and achieve recovery.

Victims of human rights abuses who participate in TJ procedures express a demand for reframing and reappraising the violent events, often in emotional terms. Witnesses at the ICTY wanted to understand why their neighbours did this to them (Stover, 2004). The majority of the victim-witnesses at a military tribunal in Guatemala wanted to understand the causes of the massacre that had taken place in their community (Lykes et al., 2007). Expectations are directed to the legal setting to provide such cognitive responses of explanation and framing, which could hardly be obtained otherwise. Perceptions of procedural justice, that is, the extent to which victims have a voice and are recognized, were found to reduce anger and anxiety among victims who gave a statement in a domestic court (Lens et al., 2015, p. 29). The legal setting and the language of justice create a unique environment that delivers the cognitive responses that victims strive for. Procedural justice mechanisms facilitate the recognition and validation of suffering that victims expect as socioaffective responses.

Navigating Emotions: Lessons From Emotion Sharing

The framework of emotion sharing has proven to be highly relevant to understanding the emotion dynamics in TJ fora. In the light of this research, strong claims as to the impact of participation, truth telling, and testimony on emotional relief and healing for victims cannot be sustained. The justifications, objectives, and promises of TJ need to become more realistic in this respect. For the pivotal process of sharing emotional trauma, shame, and guilt between victims, perpetrators, and audiences, disjunctions in the mutual sharing were found to account for the widespread feelings of anger and disappointment among victims in all TJ fora. Similarly, responses from bystanders and nonvictims hardly do justice to the complex trauma of victims and thus add to their feelings of loneliness and rejection. Here, universal processes of emotion sharing shape outcomes of TJ procedures, and they need to be acknowledged and carefully navigated in such fora.

Yet, the framework of emotion sharing also lends support to the importance of the legal setting and specific features of TJ proceedings, and thus more general to the validity of the justice model in transitions. The framework supports the presence and participation of victims, and the encouragement of expressing emotions generally. The unique features of the legal setting, such as testifying, giving evidence, and examination of perpetrators, address victims’ cognitive needs for reframing and reappraisal of traumatic events. The rules of procedural justice as realized in the TJ fora give recognition and validation to the victims’ suffering and thus address their affective needs. Taken together the legal setting has the potential to generate the very response modes that might foster emotional recovery.

Insights from the framework are relevant for identifying differences between TJ fora, and for identifying those settings that have comparative advantages for sharing emotions. Criminal trials and truth commissions do not differ significantly; rather specific features are important. The presence, space, and size of victims’ groups is critical for victims’ satisfaction. Sharing of emotions seems to have particularly detrimental effects in local and “grass-roots” community settings with a divided and partially hostile audience. Here the framework lends support to the often castigated model of higher level and even international TJ proceedings.

The framework of emotion sharing promotes a balanced perspective on the emotion dynamics between victims, perpetrators, and audiences that will give new directions to research and practice in the field of transitional justice.