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How not to Feel Outraged:Moral Disengagement and Morality Shifting

Emanuele Castano & Bernhard Leidner

New School for Social Research, New York

“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”

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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)

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

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Collective guilt and reparations

Condition(ctrl=0; Expe=1)

Guilt

Collective Reparations

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From Moral Disengagement to Morality Shifting

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• 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?

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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)

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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)

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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.

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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

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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 65-75)

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Study 1 - Explicit Morality Shifting/MFQ scores (standardized)

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Study 2 – Implicit Morality Shifting/LDT (standardized) – high scores = low

accessibility

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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.

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END

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