Transcript Castano, Shifting morals in the context of intergroup violence

How not to Feel Outraged:
Moral Disengagement and Morality Shifting
Emanuele Castano & Bernhard Leidner
New School for Social Research, New York
1
“Moral outrage for ingroup-committed
atrocities fosters restorative and retributive
justice, and it is thus beneficial to
intergroup relations”
Questionable:
– Acknowledging ingroup misconduct may fuel
resentment
– The ingroup takes priority over “justice”
2
Moral Outrage is Prevented by
Moral Disengagement Strategies
– Euphemistic labeling (e.g., collateral
damage)
– Advantageous comparisons (e.g.,
Srebrenica)
– Moral justification (e.g., battle against
evil)
– Dehumanization (moral exclusion;
deligitimization)
3
Dehumanization of One’s Victims
(Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006)
• British and the Australian Aborigines
• White Americans and the Native
Americans
• Humans and Aliens
• DV: Infra-humanization
4
5
6
Collective guilt and reparations
Guilt
Condition
(ctrl=0; Expe=1)
Collective
Reparations
7
8
From Moral Disengagement to
Morality Shifting
9
• Moral Disengagement changes the
meaning of the events so that the morality
principle does not apply
– They are justified, explained, etc.
• Morality Shifting changes the morality
principle at work
• Is abortion about women’s right or about the value
of life?
10
Morality / Moralities (Haidt and Graham, 2007)
•
•
•
•
Harm – do not do harm
Fairness – treat others fairly and justly
Loyalty – make sure your people benefit
Authority – obedience and conformity (to
ingroup authorities)
11
Harm & Fairness
• Default; intuitive; most
important; most frequently
applied
(Haidt and Graham, 2007; Kohlberg, 1969, 1971;
Miller, 2006, 2007; Shweder, 1982; Turiel, 1983; Smetana et al., 1984)
12
Moral Foundation Questionnaire
• the extent to which various considerations
(e.g., whether or not someone was
harmed) are generally relevant to one’s
decision of whether something is right or
wrong.
• moral statements (e.g., It can never be
right to kill a human being), with which one
agrees or disagrees to a different extent.
13
Morality Shifting Hypothesis
• Reminders of ingroup atrocities prompt a
shift from the default morality principles of
harm & fairness to loyalty & authority
– Relative importance of these principles
– Relative accessibility of words related to these
principles
14
Study 1 - Explicit Morality Shifting
• Participants (N=140) are U.S. born
citizens
• Manipulation: U.S. or Australian military
personnel perpetrating atrocities in Iraq
– Summary of the article
• DV: Allegedly unrelated questionnaire on
personal opinion – the MFQ (factors’ α 6575)
15
Study 1 - Explicit Morality
Shifting/MFQ scores (standardized)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
harm
-0.2
fairness
loyalty
authority
ingroup cond
outgroup cond
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
16
Study 2 – Implicit Morality Shifting/LDT
(standardized) – high scores = low
accessibility
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
harm
fairness
loyalty
authority
outgroup cond
ingroup cond
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
-0.4
17
So what?
• Very sophisticated ways to show how
things work. Yet, extremely reticent to
engage in a debate about solutions
• Exonerating cognition: Ingroup atrocities
experiments; moral vs. pragmatic
arguments against torture
• Recommendations
– Incentives (focus of publication process and
outlets)
– Immodesty.
18
END
19