Colombian Adolescents’ Trust in Others: Links to Reasoning About Retributive and Restorative Justice

• In Event: 3-187 - Trust and Youth Development in Latin America: Findings from Colombia, Honduras, and Nicaragua

Integrative Statement

Adolescents’ beliefs that other people are trustworthy and fair decline and become less malleable with age (Flanagan et al., 2010). Furthermore, in societal contexts affected by high levels of violence and injustice, youths’ interactions may be less rich in experiences of moral reciprocity and basic elements of fairness, potentially undermining their trust in others (Arsenio & Gold, 2006). In such contexts, adolescents have been found to endorse retributive solutions to interpersonal conflicts (Ardila-Rey et al., 2009; Posada & Wainryb, 2008). Yet little is known about how youth evaluate more restorative strategies in response to others’ harmful behavior, nor how individual differences in their levels of trust inform their moral judgments. To address these questions, we examined youths’ evaluations of retributive and restorative solutions to intergroup conflict and their relation to differences in assumptions about the trustworthiness of their environments (Wainryb, 1991). We situate this study in Colombia, a country with a long-standing history of conflict, poverty, and discrimination and that continues to face corruption scandals and high rates of community violence.

A sample of 14- to 19-year old urban Colombian adolescents (N=74; 38 boys) was drawn from schools in low-to-middle income neighborhoods. Participants were presented with two vignettes depicting intergroup harm based on events situated in the internal armed conflict. Scenarios varied in the reparability of harm; losing loved ones was understood as irreparable and damage to infrastructure as reparable harm. Participants evaluated four solutions for each vignette (apologies, compensation, severe punishment, compensation with mild punishment) and rated the perpetrators’ likelihood of telling the truth about their involvement and compensating the victims. Finally, participants completed a 16-item questionnaire assessing their general levels of trust (α = 0.79).

Overall, participants considered apologies to be the least desirable solution across harm types (Table 1). Youth deemed severe punishment to be a better response to losing loved ones, whereas compensation received a higher rating for damage to infrastructure (Table 1). Correlations with trust are presented in Table 2. Higher levels of trust were associated with endorsement of solutions that favored compensation and victims’ restoration at the expense of retributive measures, but only for irreparable harm; trust was also linked to endorsing apologies across harm types. Participants’ judgments were also related to their expectations of the perpetrators’ behavior; those who trusted others tended to believe that perpetrators would be honest in their accounts of harm and would compensate victims (Table 2) and these beliefs, in turn, were linked to endorsing restorative solutions (rs = .26–.60, ps < .05).

Findings point to a nuanced view of youths’ reasoning about restorative and retributive solutions to intergroup harm. In decisions that juxtaposed concerns with victims’ wellbeing and just deserts for perpetrators, predictable differences arose in relation to youths’ tendency to trust those around them. Thus, while some youth who are exposed to violence may apply their moral principles in ways that justify retaliation (Wainryb & Recchia, 2014), for others, believing in others’ integrity may allow them to uphold restorative principles that their environments decry.

Authors

• Angelica Restrepo, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Holly Recchia, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author