1 how not to feel outraged: moral disengagement and morality shifting emanuele castano &...
Post on 21-Dec-2015
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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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