IDENTITY NEEDS AND RECONCILIATION FOLLOWING COLLECTIVE TRAUMA

The Needs-Based Model of reconciliation is a social psychological framework accounting for the identity needs experienced by members of conflicting groups in the aftermath of atrocities leading to collective trauma. According to this model, the experience of victimisation threatens group members’ agentic identity (their feeling that their ingroup is respected, safe, and able to control its own outcomes), while the experience of perpetration of harm against another group threatens group members’ moral identity (their belief that their ingroup is good and has a positive moral reputation). These identity threats give rise to conflict-escalating behaviours, like vengefulness and moral disengagement, which impede the trauma from healing. However, intergroup interactions that remove the threat to group members’ identities, e.g., through official apologies and expressions of forgiveness (in the sense of willingness to open a new chapter in the relations), can pave the way to healing the trauma and strengthen pathways to peacebuilding.