State apologies for human rights violations are often seen as a key mechanism in reconciliation processes. Nevertheless, they are often contested as well and have not been embraced equally by countries around the world. This raises questions about their universal value and potential to address or redress past harmdoing by countries. In a study across 33 countries (n = 11,023), we found that people around the world consider apologies by states for human rights violations to be reasonably important but tend to be less supportive of the idea that their own country should apologize for past harmdoing. We found that this discrepancy was amplified in countries with stronger honour norms and a stronger collective sense of victim– rather than perpetratorhood. Moving beyond the decontextualized approach that has prevailed in previous psychological research on this topic, our findings show that people's attitudes towards apologies by their country do not exist in a cultural and social vacuum but depend on the extent to which the broader context affords a critical reflection on past harmdoing. As such, they help explain why some countries have been reluctant to offer apologies, and why such gestures may also be more controversial in some contexts than in others.

中文翻译：

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全球对国家为侵犯人权道歉的看法


国家对侵犯人权行为的道歉通常被视为和解进程中的关键机制。然而，它们也经常受到争议，并且没有得到世界各国的平等接受。这引发了人们对其普遍价值和解决或补救各国过去危害行为的潜力的质疑。在一项针对 33 个国家/地区 （n = 11,023） 的研究中，我们发现世界各地的人们认为国家为侵犯人权行为道歉是相当重要的，但往往不太支持本国应该为过去的伤害道歉的想法。我们发现，这种差异在荣誉规范更强、集体受害者意识更强的国家被放大——而不是肇事者。超越了以前关于该主题的心理学研究中盛行的去语境化方法，我们的研究结果表明，人们对本国道歉的态度并不存在于文化和社会真空中，而是取决于更广泛的背景在多大程度上对过去的伤害行为进行了批判性反思。因此，它们有助于解释为什么一些国家不愿意道歉，以及为什么这种姿态在某些情况下也可能比在其他国家更具争议性。