ABSTRACT

National narratives play a key role in young people’s knowledge and understanding of the past. These narratives aim to instil national pride and a common identity. We aim to investigate the interplay between narrative thinking, social identification processes, and moral emotions. We propose that people’s moral emotions about their nation’s past are related to how they understand historical concepts such as the nation and their national identification. Specifically, we propose that people may experience group-based moral emotions even when narrating distant historical events that occurred prior to the very existence of their nation. To test this hypothesis, we examined Spanish university students’ narratives about the so-called ‘Discovery’ of America. Students experienced conflicted moral emotions towards this central narrative of Spanish national heritage. Emotions such as pride, gratitude, shame and guilt were frequently experienced and explained in terms of national membership. Moral emotions experienced were associated with students’ national identification and political orientation. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the interplay between narrative thinking, social identification, and emotions, and its impact on heritage and history education.

摘要

民族叙事在年轻人对过去的知识和理解中起着关键作用。这些叙述旨在灌输民族自豪感和共同身份。我们旨在调查叙事思维，社会认同过程和道德情感之间的相互作用。我们建议人们对自己国家过去的道德情感与他们如何理解诸如民族和民族认同等历史概念有关。具体而言，我们建议人们即使讲述自己国家成立之前发生的遥远历史事件，也可能会经历基于群体的道德情感。为了检验这一假设，我们研究了西班牙大学生关于所谓“美国发现”的叙述。学生对西班牙国家遗产的这一中心叙述经历了矛盾的道德情感。诸如自豪感，感激之情，羞耻感和内感之类的情绪经常发生，并以国民身份来解释。经历的道德情感与学生的民族认同和政治倾向有关。我们讨论了这些发现对于理解叙事思维，社会认同和情感之间的相互作用及其对遗产和历史教育的影响的含义。