Detected ingroup harm triggers a moral shift elevating loyalty over harm principles

Evidence

Bernhard Leidner and I (Leidner & Castano, 2009) reasoned that when people detect violations of internalized moral norms committed by fellow in-group members, the accessibility of moral principles may shift; loyalty and authority, normally less accessible than harm and fairness in our society, become more accessible, and thus more likely to affect our judgment and behavior. As a consequence, the mistreatment or killing of others by our in-group is not immoral, and it may even become a moral imperative (Reicher, Haslam, & Rath, 2008). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2125

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanistic account that directly complicates/extends the reader’s Allport-thread claims about how prejudice recruits cognition: wrong-doing by one’s group doesn’t get rationalized away but reframes via a different moral grammar. — connects to: Mere ingroup membership biases members to deny their group’s causal role in harm — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 298; Group immersion and ideological training erode individual moral decision making in perpetrators. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 136
• ADDENDUM: Relates to moral-defense dynamics of groups; loosely parallels the ingroup-vs-outgroup violence mechanisms in the sacrifice article’s framing of dehumanization as morally licensed.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2125