Imprints of War: An Analysis of Implicit Prejudice Among Victims, Ex-Combatants, and Communities in Colombia

Armed conflict impacts individuals at psychological level by affecting the mechanisms of information processing, opinion formation, and decision-making. By means of a computer-based Implicit Association Test (IAT), we tested intergroup prejudices of 258 war victims, former guerrillas and paramilitaries, and receiving communities in Colombia.We found that differing levels of exposure to war-related experiences help to explain the observed systematic bias, both implicit and explicit, against former combatants, among communities, and particularly so among war victims.We concluded on the need to re-assess the public policy on reintegration and reconciliation in the face of generally unacknowledged psychological effects of war on people’s attitudes