Emotions

This study asks whether monuments to victims of authoritarian regimes — specifically Stolpersteine in Germany — can promote greater tolerance. Using a pre-registered survey experiment that exposed respondents to pictures of Stolpersteine, the authors examine emotional reactions and several attitudinal and quasi‑behavioral tolerance measures. The paper’s central contribution is evidence about immediate emotional responses to this form of victim commemoration and how those responses relate to measured tolerance.

Politicians and activists often use humanizing media to increase empathic concern for out-groups and thereby reduce support for punitive policies. Two experimental studies tested whether media messages that humanize Latinos succeed at (1) raising empathy and (2) changing policy attitudes among different audience segments.