Vivid out-group atrocities trigger escalation driven by moral outrage

Evidence

In retaliation, ISIS staged videotaped beheadings of two American journalists. They warned that further American attacks would bring the war to the “far enemy” and “result in the bloodshed” of Americans (Shane & Hubbard, 2014). Seeing staged beheadings of one’s fellow citizens activates a strong sense of moral obligation to put a stop to it. President Obama decided to intervene militarily in a more extensive way. What began as a very limited U.S. mission to halt the advance of ISIS forces instantly escalated into a war to eradicate ISIS. The beheadings and accompanying threats seemed designed to provoke the United States into another war that the militants could exploit as a war of the West against Islam. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2456

Categorization

• XREF: Vault’s claims about fear-driven policy support - this shows reciprocal dehumanization where one side’s atrocities justify the other’s escalation. — connects to: Genocide labelling of farm murders legitimizes extreme acts against out-groups; Images of distant suffering provoke moral engagement and military intervention. — Emanuele Castano, On the Perils of Glorifying the…, 15
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2456