https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717723508 Political Studies 1–23 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0032321717723508 journals.sagepub.com/home/psx The Emotional Underpinnings of Attitudes toward Transitional Justice Joan Barceló Abstract What explains citizens’ attitudes toward transitional justice? Studies that examined the support for transitional justice mechanisms identified three sets of factors: individual, socialization, and contextual. Building on the hot cognition theory, this article argues that the past political regime is an emotionally charged sociopolitical object encoded with its evaluative history with consequences in people’s opinion-formation process. Drawing on a specialized survey in Spain, the results first suggest that negative emotions, especially anger and fear, significantly influence the support for stronger transitional justice measures, even after adjusting for relevant confounders such as ideology, religiosity, or victimization. Second, the findings show that those who lack an emotional engagement toward the past regime, the so-called bystanders, hold attitudes toward transitional justice that are indistinguishable from those who report positive feelings (pride, patriotism, and nostalgia) toward the past regime. The effects of emotions are sizable relative to other important determinants, including ideology, religiosity, and family’s ideology. Keywords transitional justice, democratization, political attitudes, emotions, Spain Accepted: 13 June 2017 Transitional justice (TJ) is at the heart of the peace-building process of democratizing countries. 1 In many instances, negotiated transitions lead to the forgive-and-forget amnesty policy to criminals of the past regime. In this post-transitional scenario, the legit- imacy of the newly created institutions might be vulnerable to the justice deficit that derives from an unsatisfied societal demand for justice. Much research on TJ has attempted to understand the effects of historical justice mechanisms on macro- and micro-political factors. Scholars have found that some of these mechanisms can reduce conflict, as well as consolidate democratic institutions (Sikkink and Walling, 2007), people’s perceived justice, fairness and acceptance (Gibson, 2002, 2004; Gibson and Gouws, 1999), societal Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA Corresponding author: Joan Barceló, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA. Email: joanbarcelosoler@wustl.edu 723508PSX 0 0 10.1177/0032321717723508Political StudiesBarcelo research-article 2017 Article