Summary: Children of both perpetrators and survivors of genocide show the same ingroup empathy biases as their parents, despite not having lived through the violence themselves. This inherited bias may help explain why intergroup conflicts persist across generations. The study also indicates that both survivors and perpetrators find it hard to relinquish intergroup biases after such a tragedy.
Source: Université libre de Bruxelles
Empathy—the ability to feel and understand another person’s pain—is rooted in our biology: observing someone in distress typically elicits an empathic response in the observer’s brain. Yet this capacity is not distributed equally across all people. In many contexts, we naturally feel less empathy for those we perceive as outside our own social group.
“There are many situations where we register a reduced, sometimes unconscious, empathic response toward people we do not recognize as part of our group. This reduction can undermine our willingness to act prosocially toward them,” explains Dr. Emilie Caspar (Université libre de Bruxelles, Ghent University), lead author of the study published in American Psychologist.
Intergroup conflicts often stem from perceptions that another group differs in religion, culture, politics, or ethnicity. After violent conflict, the capacity to understand and resonate with the suffering of the other group is a crucial step toward reconciliation. At the same time, the trauma and resentment left behind by conflict tend to deepen intergroup divisions and strengthen biased attitudes.
Understanding how intergroup biases persist or change in societies affected by mass violence is essential to explain why some conflicts endure and to design interventions that promote reconciliation.
Rwanda presents a particularly powerful context for this research. Decades of ethnic tension culminated in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis, during which more than one million Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were killed. The genocide left deep scars across the country and created a society in which former perpetrators, survivors, and their descendants must continue to live and interact.
“In Rwanda, perpetrators were often neighbors rather than foreign invaders, and survivors must now share communities with those who once harmed their families. That reality raises a key question: after such intense trauma, can those who suffered, and their children, develop empathy for others who were once on the opposing side?” asks Emilie Caspar. Resolving that question is central to assessing the prospects for genuine reconciliation.
To investigate, Caspar and colleagues traveled across Rwanda and recruited former perpetrators, survivors, and their children with help from local associations. The team set up mobile electroencephalography (EEG) equipment in churches, bars, and other rural locations with electricity to record participants’ brain activity while they viewed images designed to elicit empathy.
“Fieldwork like this was an extraordinary undertaking. We reached populations that neuroscientists had rarely, if ever, studied on site and asked participants to wear unfamiliar equipment. Many had never encountered a computer before, so gaining trust and explaining the procedures was an important part of the project,” recalls co-author Guillaume Pech.
During the experiment, participants viewed photos of people identified as former perpetrators, survivors, or their children. Each image depicted an individual receiving either a painful or non-painful stimulus. The researchers measured brain responses that typically index empathic processing.
Consistent with prior findings, results showed that observers’ brains processed painful stimuli as more intense when the person depicted was perceived as an ingroup member rather than an outgroup member. Crucially, this ingroup empathy bias appeared in all participant groups—survivors, former perpetrators, and their children—even though the genocide had occurred 27 years earlier at the time of testing.
This pattern indicates that intergroup empathy biases can remain robust long after a traumatic event, complicating efforts to foster mutual understanding in post-conflict societies.
Perhaps most strikingly, the children of both former perpetrators and survivors exhibited the same intergroup empathy bias as their parents, despite not having experienced the genocide themselves. This finding offers a potential explanation for how intergroup animosities and reduced empathy can be transmitted across generations, contributing to the persistence of conflict dynamics.
Previous research has documented that trauma can be transmitted across generations through social mechanisms—stories, family narratives, and collective memory—and possibly through biological pathways. Determining the relative contributions of social learning and biological inheritance to intergroup empathy biases remains an important open question.
The research team does not yet know the exact mechanisms behind this intergenerational transmission. To explore whether these patterns generalize beyond Rwanda and whether they might fade over more generations, the team is preparing a follow-up project in Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge era resulted in massive loss of life in the 1970s.
That comparative work will help clarify whether intergroup empathy biases persist into second and third generations or whether they gradually diminish, and it may inform strategies to promote empathy and reconciliation in post-genocide societies.
About this empathy and psychology research news
Author: Natacha Jordens
Source: Université libre de Bruxelles
Contact: Natacha Jordens – Université libre de Bruxelles
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access. “On the impact of the genocide on the intergroup empathy bias between former perpetrators, survivors, and their children in Rwanda” by Emilie Caspar et al. American Psychologist
Abstract
On the impact of the genocide on the intergroup empathy bias between former perpetrators, survivors, and their children in Rwanda