Moral disengagement strategies only mediate glorification’s effect for ingroup-perpetrated violence
Evidence
Based on the social psychological literature, we predicted and found that although individuals engage in moral disengagement strategies to a similar extent when confronted with outgroupversus ingroup-committed atrocities, only in the ingroup-perpetrator condition do these strategies mediate the effect of glorification on justice. This result is, in our view, noteworthy. It has long been argued that moral disengagement strategies are “for doing” (Bar-Tal, 1990; Kelman, 1973; Opotow, 1990; Staub, 1987, 1990), but no clear empirical evidence of such a link has been provided. The present data thus demonstrate that moral disengagement strategies do not just reflect inconsequential beliefs about the outgroup. Rather, they are psychological mechanisms that are strategically used to morally disengage from past ingroup violence, and their use has detrimental consequences for behavioral intentions such as justice demands, in terms of punishment for ingroup perpetrators and compensation of the outgroup victims. — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 123
Categorization
- XREF: THE key variable for the reader’s specific goal: moral disengagement is the operative mechanism only in the ingroup-perpetrator condition, which reads against the reader’s search for the precise ‘ceiling’ past which protective solidarity fails. — connects to: Group immersion and ideological training erode individual moral decision making in perpetrators. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 136; Ingroup glorification uniquely predicts resistance to justice for outgroup victims, via moral disengagement. — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 14; National glorification but not attachment blocks critical evaluation of ingroup wrongdoing. — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 25 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Moral disengagement mediates glorification’s suppression of justice demands
#qualifies(0.88) — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 57 - Defensive moral disengagement after in-group wrongdoing is not universal or deterministic
#qualifies(0.82) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2151