Morality shifting in the context of intergroup violence

We propose morality shifting as a mechanism through which individuals can maintain a moral image of the ingroup. We argue that a shift from the moral principles of harm and fairness to those of loyalty and authority occurs when assessing a potentially threatening event, particularly among high ingroup glorifiers. Three studies confirmed this hypothesis using three different methodologies. Study 1 compared the use of language related to four moral foundations formulated in moral psychology in response to ingroupand outgroup-committed wrongdoings. Results showed that loyaltyand authority-related words were used more, whereas harmand fairness-related words were used less in response to ingroupcompared with outgroup-committed wrongdoings. Study 2 replicated this effect with regards to the cognitive accessibility of these moral principles. Study 3 confirmed that morality shifting is a motivated response to social identity threat, rather than a response to mere activation of social identity. Finally, as predicted, Study 3 demonstrated the effect of morality shifting to be moderated by ingroup glorification but not ingroup attachment. Implications and consequences for intergroup and individual wrongdoings, as well as for intergroup relations, are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In one of the key passages in Graham Greene’s book, The Quiet American, the intellectual, serious, and idealistic CIA operative Alden Pyle explains to British journalist Thomas Fowler that the bombing of a crowd in the center of a Vietnamese city he has just organized should not be understood as an atrocity but rather as a necessary and morally appropriate act that will change the course of history. Generally, the reader tends to sympathize with Fowler, rather than Pyle, and condemns the bombing for the suffering that it causes. To discount Pyle’s view as abhorrent, however, would be naïve, for morality is less of an absolute than we would like to think. When evaluating the morality of an event, people use various moral foundations (e.g., harm, fairness, loyalty, authority; Haidt & Graham, 2007). Thus, the same event can be judged as utterly immoral or its very opposite, depending upon which moral foundation is guiding the evaluation of the event. Because a judgment of the morality of a specific event/behavior can be consequential for the self, which moral foundation guides the evaluation can be influenced not only by culture (e.g., liberals versus conservatives; Americans versus Hindu Indians) but also by the immediate social context (e.g., the motives of the perceiver). We propose the concept of Morality Shifting to account for this self-serving process. Although this process is thought to operate at the individual level as well, we focus here on the collective level. *Correspondence to: Bernhard Leidner, Department of Psychology, Univer E-mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. SOCIAL IDENTITY AND MORALITY Social identity research and theorizing have shown that membership in social groups provides individuals with social identities that are constitutive of their sense of the self (Tajfel, 1982). In their quest to maintain a positive social identity, individuals display ingroup favoritism (for a review see Brewer, 1979) and other biases (e.g., Branscombe & Wann, 1994; Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 1999), and they use strategies to maintain the integrity of the ingroup and its positive image (e.g. Castano, Paladino, Coull, & Yzerbyt, 2002; Castano, Yzerbyt, Bourguignon & Seron, 2002; Tedeschi & Bond, 2001). Although research in the last decade has shown that individuals tend to organize social judgments largely along the dimensions of competence and sociability (e.g., Judd, James-Hawkins, Yzerbyt, & Kashima, 2005), recent evidence indicates that a fundamental dimension on which groups are evaluated is morality (Leach, Ellemers & Barreto, 2007). Immoral behavior of the ingroup can thus pose a threat to the individual. How do ingroup members react to such threats? REACTIONS TO INGROUP ATROCITIES Social psychological theories describe how people morally disengage from threats to their psychological equanimity sity of Massachusetts Amherst, 135 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003. Received 21 July 2010, Accepted 17 August 2011 Morality shifting in intergroup violence 83 (Bandura, 1999; Opotow, 1990; Staub & Bar-Tal, 2003), and recent research shows that when confronted with atrocities committed by the ingroup, individuals employ moral disengagement strategies (Bandura, 1999; Branscombe & Miron, 2004). People infrahumanize outgroup members more strongly when the ingroup is seen as responsible rather than not responsible for their deaths (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006); they display more exonerating cognitions for ingroup-committed atrocities in times of intense (versus less intense) conflict with an outgroup (Roccas, Klar, & Liviatan, 2006); and, in response to ingroup wrongdoings, those who glorify their country minimize outgroup victims’ emotions and dehumanize them, which in turn leads to weaker demands to redress the wrongdoings (Leidner, Castano, Zaiser, & Giner-Sorolla, 2010). Most of the moral disengagement strategies investigated in the context of intergroup violence change the way in which the events or the victims are perceived. The actions might be immoral, but if the magnitude of the events is played down or the victims are seen as sub-human, such actions are less distressing. Changing the moral frame within which the events are understood is a qualitatively different mechanism. Rather than acknowledging the actions as immoral but downplaying them in various ways, through morality shifting the actions come to be perceived as not immoral (or even as moral) in