11 de Marzo y culpa colectiva

Abstract

The sample comprised 1410 people from seven autonomous regions. The Collective Guilt Acceptance and Whole Group Accountability scales by Branscombe, Slugoski, and Kappen (2004) were applied in two versions: half the participants were asked to answer bearing in mind that responsibility had been attributed to Islamists; the other half had to answer as if the attack had been perpetrated by ETA. Furthermore, the DES was applied, where all participants were asked "To what extent did you feel", among other emotions, guilt when ETA was supposed to have carried out the attacks and then when it became known that the perpetrators were Islamists. Clear feelings of guilt regarding ETA's supposed involvement were found among Basque people. The more strongly they identified themselves as Basque, the more intense their feelings were. In all regions, participants scored higher in whole group accountability when ETA was thought to be responsible. Among Basques, those opposed to nationalism scored higher than those who sympathized with it. Nevertheless, guilt concerning ETA's supposed responsibility increased as sympathy did.