Art Matters: Exploring the Effects of Historical Artwork Representation and Narration on Luso-Tropicalism

Portugal's colonial past, often idealized through artwork and historical narratives, has played a central role in shaping national identity, particularly through the lens of lusotropicalism. While previous research has examined colonial narratives, the influence of artwork descriptions on lusotropicalism ideology remains underexplored. This study aims to investigate the impact of different descriptions of Portuguese colonial artwork—critical, non-critical, and control—on lusotropicalist beliefs, with a particular focus on the underlying roles of collective guilt, moral shame, intergroup empathy, and historical defensiveness. Additionally, the study will explore whether different forms of national ingroup positivity, specifically collective narcissism and ingroup satisfaction, moderate these effects. To achieve these objectives, two studies will be conducted: a pilot study to pretest two potential control/baseline conditions and a main experiment to test the proposed hypotheses.