Embedding moral critiques of violence in news reports reduces in-group defensiveness
Evidence
Although our experiments deliver mostly bad news, a silver lining still exists, for not everyone reacts in the same defensive manner exemplified by the use of moral disengagement strategies. And as discussed earlier, our morality shifting model is not deterministic when it comes to the influence of behavior. Furthermore, tired of accumulating bad news, myself and my collaborators and students, Bernhard Leidner, Caitlin Thompson, and Peter Kardos, have begun asking what would make a difference. What would make people react less defensively when confronted with news that one’s group has tortured prisoners, or caused the death of scores of civilians? Empathy, the language in which the misdeeds are presented, and principled critiques of these actions embedded in the reporting of the actions themselves, are emerging as good candidates. … For instance, if reports about in-group-perpetrated torture are accompanied by a moral critique of torture, group members react less defensively and condemn torture more strongly as compared with either the absence of a condemnation of torture or a condemnation based on pragmatic arguments (e.g., “They will do it to us”; Castano, Leidner, & Kardos, 2010). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2151
Categorization
- SEED: Article angle: how journalists can report in-group atrocities in ways that reduce rather than provoke defensive backlash — the difference between moral and pragmatic framing of condemnation.
- XREF: connects to: Perceived in-group moral violations trigger defensive cognitive distortions. — Sonia Roccas and Yechiel Klar and Ido Liviatan, The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt: Modes…, 46