1 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” 2

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)

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

7 Collective guilt and reparations

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 ) 15

Study 1 - Explicit Morality Shifting/MFQ scores (standardized) 16

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