Proud but ashamed: narratives and moral emotions about the troubled national past in Spain

Abstract

National narratives play a key role in young people’s knowledge and understanding of the past. These narratives aim to instil national pride and a common identity. We aim to investigate the interplay between narrative thinking, social identification processes, and moral emotions. We propose that people’s moral emotions about their nation’s past are related to how they understand historical concepts such as the nation and their national identification. Specifically, we propose that people may experience group- based moral emotions even when narrating distant historical events that occurred prior to the very existence of their nation. To test this hypothesis, we examined Spanish university students’ narratives about the so-called ‘Discovery’ of America. Students experienced conflicted moral emotions towards this central narrative of Spanish national heritage. Emotions such as pride, gratitude, shame and guilt were frequently experienced and explained in terms of national membership. Moral emotions experienced were associated with students’ national identification and political orientation. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the interplay between narrative thinking, social identification, and emotions, and its impact on heritage and history education.