1 Introduction

After a period of political violence, a country must rebuild itself. It must rebuild its material infrastructure: roads, schools, hospitals, factories. It must also rebuild its psychological infrastructure; that is, it must rebuild trust and cooperation between people (Martz 2010). In poor, developing countries the rebuilding of material infrastructure frequently appears as a challenging, daunting task. These ravaged countries lack of everything: money, raw materials, and technicians. The rebuilding of psychological infrastructure may, however, appear as no less daunting (Green and Ahmed 1999). Rebuilding trust and cooperation between former enemies may sometimes seem impossible. After genocide in particular, as in Rwanda in 1994, rebuilding trust and cooperation between killers and survivors appeared to be an unattainable objective (Martz 2010). “Some people were already suggesting to cut the small land into a Hutuland and a Tutsiland, so deep was the divide that many feared it could not be bridged. Some Hutus and even Tutsis were exploring and adopting the option of leaving the country to live somewhere else” (Rutayisire 2010, p. 181; see also Reyntjens and Vandeginste 2005).

Rebuilding trust and cooperation is, nevertheless, a necessary objective (Kaufman 2006). Enduring dissension, lasting resentment and spirit of revenge not only generate diminished mental health and quality of life for everyone in the country (e.g., Myers et al. 2009). They also generate an atmosphere within which a country cannot fully develop and prosperity cannot be quickly regained. In other words, damaged psychological infrastructure may be a serious impediment to the rebuilding of damaged material infrastructure (Fukuyama 1995). As a result, it is important to study the way people from countries having experienced political turmoil are able to renew contacts and cooperation with former opponents, and this is still truer in countries having experienced mass murder or genocide.

Mukashema and Mullet (2010a) have examined the level to which victims of genocide in Rwanda felt personally reconciled with the people who harmed them. These authors made a distinction between individual/personal and national/political reconciliation (Gibson 2007). The objective of national/political entities is to promote reconciliation at a country level through careful public analysis of past conflicts and public acknowledgement of abuses and atrocities. On an individual level, however, reconciliation is probably linked only loosely to the national/political process (Prager 2003). Reconciliation implies deeply individual processes that may depend largely on personal and local circumstances. According to a Tutsi survivor, “reconciliation should be between the victim and the person responsible” (Lambourne 2001, p. 315). There is no guarantee that a public politics of reconciliation will have an immediate effect on individual victims, and will lead them to reconcile quickly with their individual perpetrators (e.g., Brounéus 2010). Some survivors can even “experience national processes of reconciliation, especially in the absence of full truth and justice, as false reconciliation” (Hamber 2003, p. 80).

As a way to distinguish between individual/personal and national/political reconciliation, Mukashema and Mullet (2010a) adopted the term reconciliation sentiment that had been introduced by Shamir and Shikaki (2002) in the Palestinian-Israeli context. Reconciliation sentiment expresses the personal, intimate feeling of being reconciled, at least to a certain level, with the people who have severely harmed you. It “is an attribute of individual citizens” (Gibson 2007, p. 260). It corresponds to what Theidon (2006, p. 214) called the “micropolitics of reconciliation”.

As they were aware of the risk of introducing into their study their personal, Western-style conceptualizations about reconciliation sentiment (see Kirmayer 2010), Mukashema and Mullet (2010a) decided to begin by exploring systematically the psychological structure of feeling personal reconciliation as conceptualized and experienced by the Rwandese people. Using questionnaires created by the Rwandese people themselves and factor analyses, they found two separable factors.

The first factor was called Interpersonal Component of Reconciliation Sentiment since it loaded on items that expressed the resumption of some amount of trust and collaboration (e.g., Feeling reconciled with the people who harmed you means that you feel that you can now trust the judgment of these people). This factor expressed the instrumental type of reconciliation suggested by Nadler and Shnabel (2008, 2011). The second factor was called Intra-personal Component of Reconciliation Sentiment since it loaded on items that only expressed the capacity to control oneself when in the presence of the offenders (e.g., Feeling reconciled with the people who harmed you means that you don’t harbor violent feelings towards the people who harmed you). This factor expressed the “thinner form of reconciliation” already identified by Crocker (2003). Not surprisingly, they found that the interpersonal component of reconciliation sentiment was rated as more typical of “reconciliation” than the intra-personal component of reconciliation sentiment. This two-factor structure was consistent with the very simple, grass-roots definition of reconciliation that Theidon (2006, p. 226) suggested in the report of her work on Peruvian survivors of mass murders and atrocities: “the reconstruction of social relationships and coexistence” (see also Lambourne 2001; Govier 2002, p. 141).

Mukashema and Mullet (2010a) subsequently explored the relationship between reconciliation sentiment and mental health among primary victims of the genocide. On the basis of the results of their study on conceptualizations, they created a Reconciliation Sentiment Questionnaire composed of items referring to the current degree of reconciliation sentiment (e.g., “I feel I am willing to share pleasurable activities again with the people who harmed me”). They also used the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg and Williams 1988). This instrument assesses aspects of mental health such as sleeping problems, anxiety, and perceptions of personal difficulties. This questionnaire had already been used in post-conflict settings (e.g., Myers et al. 2009), and it has been adapted to the Rwandese population (Mukashema and Mullet 2010b).

They found that intrapersonal reconciliation sentiment was reasonably high. Most participants agreed with the view that they can live in close contact with their perpetrators without experiencing strong desires of violence. Unsurprisingly, interpersonal reconciliation sentiment was considerably lower. These values were consistent with previous findings in similar settings (Gibson 2004; Shamir and Shikaki 2002). A significant association was evidenced between reconciliation sentiment and mental health, but it was essentially interpersonal reconciliation sentiment; that is, the renewed capacity to interact again on a daily basis with former opponents that was associated with mental health.

1.1 The Present Study

The present study was aimed at exploring further the association between reconciliation sentiment and mental health by examining the role of forgivingness; that is, the capacity to forgive in daily life (Roberts 1995). The study was triggered by the realization that, among the participants in the study by Mukashema and Mullet (2010a), some of them have been able to show a remarkably high level of reconciliation sentiment despite the realization that very few members of the group that perpetrated the genocide have, in fact, directly apologized (e.g., Kanyangara et al. 2007). In other words, certain participants seemed to have had the capacity to forgive their former enemies to the point of feeling reconciled with them and other participants did not seem to have had this capacity (and most participants were in-between).

Forgivingness has been examined in a variety of cultural and religious contexts using a questionnaire (Mullet et al. 2003) that was based on common Western views about forgiveness (Wade and Worthington 2003; Worthington and Wade 1999). The forgivingness construct comprises three empirically separable aspects. These three aspects—lasting resentment, sensitivity to circumstances, and unconditional forgiveness—have been found to be cross-culturally robust (e.g., Kira et al. 2009; Paz et al. 2008; Suwartono et al. 2007; Tripathi and Mullet 2010). Some of them have also been found to be associated with behavioral-type variables (e.g., homicide, Menezes Fonseca et al. 2012).

Lasting resentment corresponds to the tendency to persist in negative emotions and negative cognitions, and to exhibit avoidance behaviors towards offenders, even in the presence of positive circumstances (e.g., As far as I am concerned, I remain resentful even if the offender has begged for forgiveness). This aspect, which expresses strong, basic physiological reactions to the harmful situation, is the one that is usually the more strongly correlated with demographic characteristics and personality (e.g., Neto 2007). Sensitivity to the circumstances of the offense expresses the ability to analyze the pros and cons of harmful situations, and to build on the many circumstances of these situations in deciding whether to forgive or not to forgive (e.g., As far as I am concerned, I forgive more easily a member of my family than I forgive anyone else.). It can be considered as representing the “earthly” aspect of forgiveness, the one in which human’s natural reluctance to forgive and considerations of interpersonal and social justice are taken into account at the time of forgiving. In this view, for forgiveness to be granted, the offender is strongly expected to demonstrate repentance and contrition, and explicitly, sometimes repeatedly, to beg for forgiveness (e.g., Mullet and Azar 2009).

Finally, unconditional forgiveness expresses the tendency to harbor positive attitudes towards the offender even in the absence of positive circumstances (e.g., As far as I am concerned, I can easily forgive even if the offender has not begged for forgiveness.). It has been shown to be essentially a reflection of one’s conceptualization of ideal forgiveness or divine forgiveness (e.g., Akl and Mullet 2010). It can be viewed as the product of a type of personal, spiritual growth that may be relatively independent of external influences.

1.2 Hypothesis

Our hypothesis was that, in the particular conditions of daily life in Rwanda, the victims’ capacity to forgive unconditionally (unconditional forgiveness) would be essentially the one that could lead them to feel (at least partly) reconciled with their offenders. As stated above, very few perpetrators have, in fact, apologized. Consequently, the other aspects of forgivingness (e.g., sensitivity to circumstances) cannot be mobilized for forgiveness to be granted and reconciliation to be made possible.

This hypothesis was consonant with views expressed by Hook et al. (2009) that in collectivistic cultures, as in Rwanda, the decision to forgive is probably more strongly motivated by the recovering of group harmony than by the recovering of inner peace of mind. This hypothesis was also consonant with findings from a recent study of the motives expressed by Western people to explain why they forgive in daily life (Ballester et al. 2011). People’s forgiveness appeared to be fueled mainly by three largely independent kinds of motives: having regained sympathy for a repentant offender (e.g., I have forgiven because the offender had sincerely apologized), applying a moral principle (e.g., because it is always the right thing to do, because forgiveness is an important asset in social life), and preserving/restoring a meaningful relationship (e.g., to keep the offender’s affection, because not forgiving would have been a source of troubles). If the first kind of motive cannot, owing to the particular circumstances in this country, be operant among the Rwandese victims, both other motives—moral/transcendental and relational—can still fully play a role.

2 Method

2.1 Participants

The initial sample was composed of 110 participants. Nine participants were removed since they did not fully complete the questionnaire. The final sample was composed of 72 females and 29 males living in the southern province of Rwanda. Their ages ranged from 18 to 70 and the mean age was 35.58 (SD = 11.34). All the participants came from the ethnic group targeted by the genocide in 1994. All participants declared they had suffered directly from the genocide; that is, they were primary victims (widows or children of killed people). The number of female participant largely exceeded the number of male participants because male survivors were less numerous than female survivors. The participation rate was 66%.

Seventy-one participants had received primary education, 19 participants had secondary education, and 11 had received university education. All participants were unpaid volunteers. Contact with the participants was approved and facilitated by the local authorities (who even helped in finding the locations to which the participants were invited to complete the questionnaire).

Special efforts were made to contact people from different villages, boroughs, and towns and from different educational levels in order to maximize, as much as possible, the representativeness of the sample. Every person contacted who was willing to participate in the study was included in the sample. However, the samples were, of course, composed only of people who were literate.

2.2 Material

The material consisted of three questionnaires. The first questionnaire was the Reconciliation Sentiment Questionnaire. It was composed of 12 items that referred to the degree of reconciliation sentiment. The second questionnaire was the Forgivingness Questionnaire (Mullet et al. 2003). For the sake of brevity, 12 items were retained, four items for each of the three factors: lasting resentment, sensitivity to circumstances, and unconditional forgiveness. In each case, a large, 11-point response scale (0–10) was offered in order to provide participants with more latitude for responding. The two extremes of the scales were labeled “Disagree completely” and “Completely agree”.

The third questionnaire was the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg and Williams 1988). On the basis of a previous study (Mukashema and Mullet 2010b), six items that more specifically assessed mental health aspects such as sleeping problems, anxiety, and perceptions of personal difficulties were retained. Table 1 shows the main characteristics of these questionnaires. All questionnaires were written in Kinyarwanda.

Table 1 The factors involved in the study
Full size table

2.3 Procedure

The data was gathered in 2009. Each participant responded individually. The experimenters asked participants to read the questionnaire’s items—sentences expressing levels of reconciliation sentiment or levels of daily life problems—and rate his/her degree of agreement with each statement.

3 Results

For each questionnaire and each factor the mean values are shown in Table 1. Twelve participants had a mental health score that was higher than 2.99, 31 participants had a score that was higher than 1.99 and lower than 3, and 58 participants had a score that was lower than 2.

Correlation coefficients were computed between these scores. They are shown in Table 2. The highest coefficients were, as expected, between mental health and interpersonal reconciliation sentiment (renewed trust and cooperation) and between unconditional forgiveness and interpersonal reconciliation sentiment.

Table 2 Correlations between variables involved in the study
Full size table

A first forced stepwise regression analysis was conducted with interpersonal reconciliation sentiment as the criteria, and age, gender and the three forgivingness measurements as predictors. At the first step, all the predictors were included, except unconditional forgiveness. The part of variance explained was low (7 % of the variance), and non significant. At the second step, unconditional forgiveness was introduced. The explained part of variance increased from 7 to 31 %, and this increase was significant, F(1, 95 = 31.69, p < .001).

A second forced stepwise regression analysis was conducted with mental health (loss, anxiety and depression) as the criteria, and age, gender, the three forgivingness measurements, and the two reconciliation sentiment measurements as predictors. At the first step, all the predictors were included, except interpersonal reconciliation sentiment. The part of variance explained was low (11 % of the variance), and non significant. At the second step, interpersonal reconciliation sentiment was introduced. The explained part of variance increased from 11 to 25 %, and this increase was significant, F(1, 93 = 17.31, p < .001).

4 Discussion

The present study assessed the relationships between mental health, reconciliation sentiment, and forgivingness among Rwandese survivors of genocide. As hypothesized, (a) a strong, positive association was found between interpersonal reconciliation sentiment (trust and cooperation) and unconditional forgiveness, and (b) no significant associations were found between interpersonal reconciliation sentiment and the other two factors of the forgivingness construct: lasting resentment and sensitivity to circumstances. This pattern of associations is consistent with the view already expressed that, owing to the current situation in Rwanda, where very few perpetrators have directly apologized, the only way for the victims to achieve a state of forgiveness is through unconditionally forgiving the people who harmed them. This finding was consistent with previous findings observed in post-conflict settings and showing an association between intergroup forgiveness and positive attitudes towards the out-group (Tam et al. 2007), and intergroup forgiveness and out-group trust (Noor et al. 2008).

The positive association that was found between interpersonal reconciliation sentiment and mental health that was reported by Mukashema and Mullet (2010a) was also found, and the strength of the relationship was of the same magnitude (about .40) as the one reported by these authors. This finding was consistent with findings by Pham et al. (2004) showing a relationship between PTSD and attitudes towards national reconciliation among victims of the genocide in Rwanda (see also Bayer et al. 2007). In addition, as in Mukashema and Mullet (2010a), no significant relationship was found between mental health and the other aspect of reconciliation sentiment, intra personal reconciliation sentiment (non-lethal co-existence).

The association that was found between unconditional forgiveness and mental health, although significant, was weak. This result was consistent with findings showing a positive relationship between mental health and forgiveness in a great variety of settings (Bono 2005; Kira et al. 2009; Lopes Cardozo et al. 2003; Myers et al. 2009). It also illustrates the fact that, in the particular case of Rwanda, forgivingness is associated with mental health only to the extent that forgivingness can fuel interpersonal reconciliation sentiment. Forgivingness in itself does not suffice for “inducing” mental health.

Another finding deserves comments. There was a positive association between lasting resentment and intrapersonal reconciliation sentiment (non-lethal co-existence). This relationship helps explain the nature of this kind of reconciliation sentiment. This sentiment was felt most strongly among the people who reported the highest level of resentment. As a result, it is reasonable to consider that a reconciliation sentiment of this kind essentially expresses the strong self-control these people need to exert when they are in the perpetrators’ presence. In other words, non-lethal coexistence has nothing to do with simple indifference and cannot be conducive to good mental health. It possibly corresponds to what some Peruvian victims in Theidon’s (2006) study called “swallowing our rage”.

In summary, it is remarkable that, in this study as well as in that of Mukashema and Mullet (2010a), the type of reconciliation that was called instrumental by Nadler and Shnabel (2008), which here corresponds to the interpersonal variant, although apparently “superficial” in character, was, nevertheless, found to be significantly associated with mental health. This type of reconciliation, which involves simply the rebuilding of some form of trust and cooperation between citizens, contributes to societal well being. As discussed above, societal well being is a basic ingredient for the development of prosperous societies: “Political reconciliation is not a mere romantic or utopian ideal. It is a mode of realism—a serious option for living together in the midst of unresolved conflict. It concerns the establishment of an ethical relationship as a basis on which former enemies and antagonists can address prevailing problems in a viable and cooperative manner” (Villa-Vicencio 2006, p. 60).

4.1 Promoting Interpersonal Reconciliation Sentiment

As emphasized by Worchel and Coutant (2008), laboratory-based programs that have been developed for improving intergroup relations are bound to have only limited effects when intergroup violence has attained the level of genocide (see also, Staub et al. 2005). “Imported mental health practices may not have any practical meaning for resolving local communities’ problems” (Cairns 2005, p. 236; see also Worthington et al. 2010). As expressed by a Peruvian woman who survived mass murder in her village, “when a woman continues to live across the street from her rapist—or a father sees the man who murdered his son each week at the market—where do we locate the disorder?” In other words, “is it effective, indeed is it ethical, to provide trauma counseling that focuses on the intrapsychic realm and aims to aid the individual in ‘adapting’ to his or her environment” when social relationships and daily life have been so severely distorted (Theidon 2006, p. 212)?

Mukashema and Mullet (2010a) suggested that one way to promote reconciliation sentiment (and associated mental health) would be to rely on diverse, more or less spontaneous expressions of the Rwandese civil society, namely, the many local associations of women and survivors. Through these associations, citizen could be sensitized to the challenge of reconciliation. They may understand that trust-building reconciliation is more than the simple acceptance of coexistence. This suggestion echoes Theidon’s (2006, p. 212) proposal that working on mental health in post-conflict societies must fundamentally be conceived as “collaborating with—not intervening in—the reconstruction of individual lives and collective existence following lethal violence among intimate enemies.” It also echoes Pankhurst’s (1999, p. 255) view that “reconciliation is generally a more domestic affair in which the role of members of the international community should be limited to supporting what emerge from within society”.

Youth education also constitutes, in the long term, a powerful tool that could be implemented for attaining interpersonal reconciliation (Warshauer et al. 2004). Youth education should be conceptualized in such a way that all young children and adolescents in the country are sensitized to issues of coexistence, conflicts, and democracy. In particular, the way history is taught in Rwandan schools is of utmost importance. As reported by Rutayisire (2010, p. 173), racial prejudice against Tutsis was mainly learned from teachers and the school curriculum: Seventy-five percent of the persons interviewed by Rutayisire declared that their negative views towards the group targeted for genocide were shaped at school. “Most of our Rwanda present social misfortunes are the sour harvest of our national past, an unfortunate legacy of psychological scars, social injustices, economical and political/ideological ills. Our fathers sowed the wind and we reap the tempest” (Rutayisire 2010, p. 173).

That the history curriculum is currently in the process of being reshaped in a scientific, evidence-grounded way constitutes an invaluable and optimistic factor. On a more concrete level, Worthington (2001, p. 177) suggested employing reconciliation heroes and healing stories to teach history to youngsters. Recent history has many heroes who courageously pursued reconciliation (like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, and Carlos Belo and Xanana Gusmão), politicians who died to make people more politically responsible (like Jean Jaures and Martin Luther King Jr.), or salient events of repentance (like Chancellor Brandt kneeling at the Monument in the Warszawa ghetto). “Not only positive stories help promote reconciliation; they can also lead to intrapersonal experiences of forgiveness”.

Aside from school, family education is also an essential factor, and more specifically the kind of affective bond that is established between children and parents during the early years of life. Forgivingness is, unsurprisingly, associated with attachment style (Burnette et al. 2010). A secure attachment style develops in an environment in which both parents are accessible and responsive to the children’s needs. In other words, a reasonably warm parents-child relationship is necessary for the creation of a secure attachment style. Once a secure attachment style has been formed, the person (child, adolescent, or adult) becomes able to approach new relationships in a reasonably trustful and comfortable way and, should the case arise, to adopt an unconditionally forgiving attitude. In contrast, an insecure attachment style develops when the affective quality of the parents-child relationship is unstable and varies in an unpredictable way. Once an insecure attachment style is formed, the person is bound to approach intimate relationships with varying levels of fear and distrust, and is less likely to be able, if need be, to adopt a forgiving attitude?

Insecure attachment and forgiveness are negatively associated, and this association holds whether insecure attachment is anxiety attachment or avoidance attachment (Lawler-Row et al. 2006). More specifically, victims high in attachment avoidance tend to lack empathy and denigrate the offender and their previous relationship with him or her, whereas victims high in anxiety attachment tend to engage in unending rumination.

There is another, although associated reason why family education is essential. As shown by Rutayisire (2010, p. 173), in 12 % of the cases, the persons interviewed insisted that social prejudice against the members of the group targeted for genocide was transmitted to and by the family. This means that each parent who transmits to his or her offspring a vision of the past that is partial and distorted and that is conducive to intolerance and revenge is just preparing the next turn of events. In contrast, each parent who communicates a vision of the past that is consistent with the historic truth and that is conducive to tolerance and respect is working towards the goal of a better future for the country.

Finally, it is suggested that “because reconciliation is quite capable of changing (and likely to change) over time, efforts must be made to track levels of reconciliation as an important social indicator” (Gibson 2007, p. 257). This objective could be attained by means of the Reconciliation Sentiment Questionnaire used in the present study (see “Appendix”).