Political apologies have been theorized to play an important role in healing and reconciliation processes in post-conflict settings. Whether they actually fulfil this function, however, remains unclear as the voices and perspectives of victim communities have largely been underrepresented in research. To address this, we examined the role of apologies that were offered for the El Mozote massacre (El Salvador), the Jeju 4.3 massacres (Republic of Korea) and Bloody Sunday (United Kingdom), according to members of these communities and the broader public. Although we anticipated that victim community members should find the apology more valuable and meaningful and should, therefore, be more positive about its role in healing and reconciliation processes, we found that this varies across countries. This variation could be explained by people's trust in the country's institutions. Across the samples, we found that the apology was seen as a relatively important gesture. For the apology to be perceived as impactful, however, it had to be seen as a meaningful (i.e. sincere) gesture. Our findings suggest that apologies have a role to play in the aftermath of human rights violations, but that it is essential to take the broader context into account.

中文翻译：

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毫无意义的手势或治愈与和解的途径？比较萨尔瓦多、大韩民国和英国受害者和非受害者社区对政治道歉的看法

从理论上讲，政治道歉在冲突后环境中的愈合与和解过程中发挥着重要作用。然而，由于受害者社区的声音和观点在研究中基本上没有得到充分代表，因此他们是否真正履行了这一职能仍不清楚。为了解决这个问题，我们研究了根据这些社区成员和广大公众的说法，为 El Mozote 大屠杀（萨尔瓦多）、济州岛 4.3 大屠杀（大韩民国）和血腥星期天（英国）道歉的作用. 尽管我们预计受害者社区成员应该会发现道歉更有价值、更有意义，因此应该对其在治愈与和解过程中的作用更加积极，但我们发现这在不同国家/地区有所不同。这种变化可以解释为人们的 对国家机构的信任。在样本中，我们发现道歉被视为一个相对重要的姿态。然而，要使道歉具有影响力，就必须将其视为有意义的（即真诚的）姿态。我们的研究结果表明，道歉在侵犯人权行为的后果中可以发挥作用，但必须考虑更广泛的背景。