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行为道歉的看法


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世价值以及解决或纠正各国过去危害行为的潜力的质疑。一项针对 33 个国家/地区的研究（ n = 11,023），我们发现世界各地的人们认为国家为侵犯人权行为道歉相当重要，但往往不太支持自己的国家应该为过去的伤害行为道歉的想法。我们发现，在荣誉规范更强、集体受害者意识而非加害者意识更强的国家，这种差异会被放大。我们的研究超越了之前关于这一主题的心理学研究中盛行的脱离语境的方法，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提供批判性反思的程度论过去的恶行。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可能比在其他情况下更具争议性。