Peace after violent conflict often hinges on reconciliation with persons suspected of having collaborated with an enemy. Receiving communities must refrain from vengeance, lest the cycle of violence renew. Can accused collaborators mitigate past wrongs through attempts at redemption? We present results of an experiment embedded in a face-to-face survey (n = 4592) of communities confronting the return or resettlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) accused of collaboration with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Despite both reconciliation and revenge being keys to unlocking durable peace, they are rarely investigated within a single study. We find that perceived culpability for past wrongs strongly predicts reconciliation and revenge propensities towards stigmatized IDPs. Redemptive signals have little to no impact, though IDPs who assist in security efforts to combat the enemy elicit more reconciliatory responses. Cognitive and emotional decomposition analyses indicate that past behavior shapes latent reconciliation and revenge propensities because it simultaneously activates a past-oriented moral condemnation and a future-oriented heuristic assessment of the value and risks of associating with the IDP. These results suggest that durable peace requires careful programming attentive to the culpability of individual crimes, and that prevailing redemptory strategies for accused collaborators may be ineffective.
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