The Effect of Ingroup Reprehensible Actions: Collective Emotions and Moral Disengagement

The New School, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

It has been suggested that a nation is founded not only on collective memories, but also on collective forgetting. Understandably, the citizens of a nation will want to forget their nation's massacre of minorities, participation in colonization, as well as vicious aspects of civil wars and the torture of prisoners in which it has been involved. However, because reminders of these actions are often ubiquitous, individuals may experience guilt for these actions, and in these cases, be willing to provide reparations to those who have been wronged. An alternative reaction occurs when individuals who are reminded of their nation's past transgressions, experience relatively less positive reactions to those who have been wronged. In these circumstances, they may disregard the information, invoke higher moral goals, perceive the source as illegitimate, deny the facts, or dehumanize the victims. Taken together, these moral disengagement strategies help to explain human beings' participation in wide-scale violence towards others. The proposed program of research integrates insights from the literature on moral disengagement and more recent work on collective emotions to advance theoretical understanding of the psychological consequences of collective transgressions. It is proposed that when individuals are confronted with reminders of the reprehensible actions of their group, they will be negatively aroused, and they will experience emotions such as shame and guilt. It is further expected that these emotions motivate the individual to apply specific appraisals of the situation. These appraisals may involve an acknowledgment of the wrongdoings and a willingness to provide reparations, or they may result in the use of a moral disengagement strategy. Four series of experimental studies will be conducted to examine the likelihood of these different possibilities. In each study, participants who vary in their degree of identification with the in-group are reminded of atrocities committed by their in-group or the out-group. How these reminders influence participants' emotional reactions, evaluative judgments, and the use of moral disengagement strategies will be determined. This research provides a new perspective on the psychological consequences of dealing with one's group's reprehensible past, and will contribute to the literatures on guilt, shame and moral disengagement. In addition, this research will complement additional work involving the PI that explores dehumanization of enemies and international humanitarian law.