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How not to Feel Outraged: Moral Disengagement and Morality Shifting

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”

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How not to Feel Outraged: Moral Disengagement and Morality Shifting

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  1. How not to Feel Outraged:Moral Disengagement and Morality Shifting Emanuele Castano & Bernhard Leidner New School for Social Research, New York

  2. “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”

  3. 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)

  4. 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

  5. Collective guilt and reparations

  6. From Moral Disengagement to Morality Shifting

  7. 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?

  8. 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)

  9. 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)

  10. 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.

  11. 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

  12. 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)

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

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

  15. 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.

  16. END

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