Sabina Čehajić-Clancy shows that a focus on collective responsibility for mass atrocities, which is indispensable in terms of provoking a positive psychological reaction - such as empathy and support for reparation policies, brings about negative reactions as well, such as victim dehumanization.
Introduction
In this paper I will talk about victim dehumanization, as a defensive mechanism strategy, which can be employed when faced with morally violated behaviour committed by one’s group. Moral disengagement theory, as proposed by Albert Bandura, suggest that dehumanization of the ‘other’ eases the conduct of harming by undermining any kind of emotional distress (such as guilt). However, recent empirical evidence suggests that victim dehumanization can be used even after the commission of atrocities, serving the purpose of defending oneself from the implications of one’s group behaviour. In the pages to follow, I will briefly outline main propositions of the moral disengagement theory and more importantly present you with empirical data, collected in the context of post-conflict intergroup relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which shed some light to the question “what happens once people are reminded of their ingroup responsibility for atrocities committed in the past.”
The Principles of Moral Disengagement
After grave harm and monstrous atrocities have been committed during the Second World War, social scientists asked themselves how, on earth, is it possible for such ‘ordinary’ people to commit such horrible acts of mass killings? In particular, Albert Bandura, a well renowned social psychologist, identified a variety of mechanisms through which human beings can behave brutally towards other fellow humans. These, so called, moral disengagement strategies include various psychological mechanisms which ‘ease’ the conduct of immoral behaviour by inhibiting negative self-sanctions (e.g., guilt). Such mechanisms apply to a variety of settings, from cheating in school to evading taxes, but they have been particularly useful in understanding intergroup violence, torture, mass murder and genocide.
In this sense, Bandura proposed moral justifications, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility etc. to be some of the many available and used moral disengagement strategies. For example, in the process of moral justification, detrimental conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as being in the service of valued social or moral purposes. It is suggested that people, before engaging in harmful conduct, have justified to themselves the morality of their or their group’s actions. Through moral justifications, people can see themselves (or one’s group) as having fought in the name of righteous ideologies or nationalistic imperatives. For example, Milosevic’s rhetoric entailed a lot of reference to the Kosovo battle in 1389 by portraying Serbs as people who have been tortured by Turks and now need to re-establish the honour of their country. Such a use of moral justifications has the potential to make ordinary, decent citizens conduct atrocious acts in the name of some ideologies, beliefs, or principles.
Finally, and maybe most tragically, dehumanization of those who are victimized can inhibit self-censure before and during the misconduct. Bandura suggested that once victims are dehumanized, they are no longer viewed as persons with feelings, hopes, concerns and therefore it becomes easier to harm them without suffering any personal distress. Thus, the process of dehumanization is an essential ingredient in the perpetration of inhumanities.
Even though research on moral disengagement strategies including dehumanization has focused mainly on the factors leading to violence, I think that it is of utmost relevance to the understanding of post-violence situations. Moral justification, legitimization, euphemistic labeling and finally victim dehumanization can indeed be essential in understanding how people deal with atrocities committed either by themselves or their own group.
Defences against (collective) Responsibility
Unfortunately, a more common reaction to reminders of collective (group) responsibility is of a defensive nature. People are more likely to refuse incorporation of negative elements into their group’s collective identity in order to maintain a positive group (self) image and/or inhibit any potential emotional distress. Consequently, group members might engage in denial of their group’s negative behaviour (Cohen, 2001), legitimization of their group’s actions or simply claim that the ‘current’ group is not the one which committed those horrible things. In addition, members of perpetrator groups are also inclined to perceive that they, and not the victim group, have suffered the most (Bar-Tal & Bennink, 2004)1. An increased use of such ‘competitive victimhood’ discourse by perpetrators can serve as a strategy to reduce the sense of culpability and hence relieve them of their moral burden (Ther, 2006).
Finally, and maybe most tragically, dehumanization of those who are victimized can inhibit self or group-oriented distress not only before but also after the misconduct (Bandura, 1999; Kelman, 1973). Recent research by Castano & Giner-Sorolla (2006) investigated the phenomena of dehumanization as an effect of reminders of collective (group) responsibility for past atrocities. Across three studies in two different countries (Britain and USA), using different groups (Aliens, Aborigines, and Native Americans) as victims of atrocities committed by their group, Castano & Giner-Sorolla (2006) found that reminders of collective responsibility for past atrocities elicited derogation of the victims in terms of emotions they (the victims) were capable of feeling. For instance, it was found that white Americans who were presented with accounts of massacres of Native Americans by Europeans, as opposed to milder accounts of relations between the two groups, estimated Native Americans to be less capable of feelings that are considered uniquely human. In other words, group members who were reminded of atrocities committed by their group perceived the victims as somewhat less-human in an implicit (rather than direct) fashion by attributing to them fewer secondary emotions2.
Measuring Victim Dehumanization
In a recent research we conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, my colleagues and I decided to follow the logic by Castano and Giner-Sorolla (2006) and measure victim dehumanization through attribution of secondary vs. primary emotions. Endorsement of blatant out-group dehumanization beliefs might not be a socially acceptable response and hence may be unlikely to occur. Therefore, we focused on a more subtle dehumanization measure - the attribution of certain emotions to the out-group. The work by Leyens and his colleagues suggest that the capacity to feel secondary emotions is thought to be one of the characteristics that make us human and is not simply a matter of higher emotional or cognitive capacities. As noted above, examples of primary emotions are anger, fear, and pleasure while secondary emotions include pride, love, guilt, and remorse. Both types of emotions can be positive and negative. However, it is the secondary emotions that are considered to be uniquely human. Therefore, secondary emotions define the ‘essence’ of what it means to be human (Leyens et al., 2000).
Numerous studies have demonstrated that secondary emotions (independent of their valence) are typically selected more often for the in-group than for the out-group (Leyens et al., 2001). Leyens et al. (2000) call this phenomenon infrahumanization and regard it as a subtle form of dehumanization. The phenomenon of infrahumanization suggests that by attributing more secondary emotions to the ingroup and thus denying the outgroup the human essence, people engage in a subtle and largely implicit dehumanization process. However, unlike dehumanization, infrahumanization does not, per se, imply an explicit link between outgroups and animals but rather expresses peoples’ tendency to attribute more human quality to the ingroup and to relevant outgroups.
Method and Results
In order to examine whether reminders of collective responsibility would elicit victim dehumanization, we decided to conduct an experiment in the post-conflict context of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The foremost aim of this study was to re-test the hypothesis (by Castano and Giner-Sorolla (2006) that perception of group responsibility would decrease attribution of secondary emotions to the victim group. This study was conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) using the recent intergroup conflict as the research setting. It comprised a condition in which participants were not reminded that their ingroup was responsible for the harm inflicted on others but simply asked to fill out the questionnaire (no reminders of ingroup responsibility), and a condition where participants were reminded of ingroup responsibility for past wrongdoings.
158 participants from a high school in Nevesinje participated in this study on a voluntary basis. The mean age was 17 years. All participants identified themselves as Serbs. Participants were asked to fill out a series of questions regarding the post-war situation and their attitudes towards other ethnic groups in the country. Before proceeding to the questions, half of the participants read an interview abstract where two young people talked about dealing with their group’s atrocities. The goal of reading this abstract was to remind participants of group responsibility for the committed atrocities. The other half of participants was not reminded of their group responsibility. They were simply asked to answer a series of questions regarding the recent intergroup conflict between 1992-1995. Afterwards, participants responded to the questionnaire containing the dependent measures. Finally, they were thanked and debriefed.
Attribution of emotions was measured with 16 emotion words which were derived from Demoulin et al., (2004). The following emotions were used: happiness, euphoria, pleasure, and joy (primary positive emotions); sadness, disgust, anger, and fear (primary negative emotions); tenderness, hope, admiration, and love (secondary positive emotions); and remorse, guilt, shame, and resentment (secondary negative emotions). Participants were asked to indicate “the extent to which you believe that Bosniaks, in general, are likely to feel the given emotion?” on scale from 1 to 7. Final scales for attribution of primary and secondary emotions were reliable.
The pattern of results emerging from this study provided further support for the prediction that reminders of collective responsibility for past wrongdoings facilitate subtle victim dehumanization. The victim group is perceived as lacking secondary emotions when participants are reminded of their group responsibility vs. when they are not reminded. In other words, after Serb adolescents were made aware of their group misdeeds and the issues of collective responsibility, they attributed fewer secondary emotions to Bosniaks than when they were not presented with a reminder of group responsibility for past atrocities. We have obtained similar findings in a totally different intergroup contexts, namely in Chile, where we have examined the intergroup relation between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Chileans (Cehajic, Brown, and Gonzalez, in press).
These results support the idea that denying others a full human status (even if only subtly) allows people to disengage from the pain and suffering inflicted to them (Bandura, 1999). The findings provided by this and other studies suggest that individuals presented with reminders of collective responsibility can indeed embark on a moral disengagement path. In other words, when faced with morally objectionable behaviour by the in-group, those group members who do not possess ‘enough’ psychological capacity to perceive the in-group to be responsible for committed misdeeds, decide to morally disengage from the implications of their group’s behaviour.
Implications
Which socio-psychological conditions determine (moderate) whether individuals will embark on the moral engagement or disengagement path? It could be hypothesized that low identifiers might be less threatened by their group’s moral violations and hence more likely to morally engage with implications of their group’s behaviour in comparison with high identifiers. In addition, individuals with extensive contact with outgroup members seem to develop more empathy (Cehajic, Brown, & Castano, 2008) and so might also be less likely to defend the self and/or the ingroup and hence be less likely to employ a use of moral disengagement strategies. Future research should aim to follow up these issues.
These results seem to suggest that reminders of collective responsibility act as a threatening information from which individuals will try to defend themselves. But, on the other hand, we also know that perception of collective responsibility is indeed necessary for facilitation of moral responses such as empathy, guilt, and reparation (e.g., Brown & Cehajic, 2008; Cehajic & Brown, 2008; Branscombe & Doosje, 2004). Hence, it seems that a focus on collective responsibility provokes both, a positive (or desired) - such as empathy and support for reparation policies, and a negative (less desired) - such as victim dehumanization - psychological reaction. So, what does this tell us? Are reminders of collective responsibility for atrocities committed in the past then useful for restoration of intergroup relations and ultimately reconciliation? Do we need to deal with the past in order to face a better future? I believe that we do. I have always argued and empirically shown that reminders of collective responsibility are indeed necessary for successful reconciliation as they (among other things) facilitate moral responses by those not directly implicated in the atrocities (Cehajic & Brown, 2008; Brown & Cehajic, 2008). For example, our previous research has shown that participants who acknowledge their group atrocities and perceive their own group to be responsible for those are more willing to personally accept some moral (collective) responsibility; endorse reparation policies to be provided to the victims; feel more empathy; and finally support reconciliatory processes (Brown & Cehajic, 2008; Cehajic & Brown, 2008; Cehajic & Brown, 2009; Cehajic & Halperin, 2009).
These and other findings have only strengthen my argument that a focus on responsibility is a way (albeit sometimes very painful way) of coming to terms with the past marked by collective violence. However, and to come back to my question, I also think that we need to be aware that reminders of collective responsibility can activate usage of defense mechanisms such as victim dehumanization. So, what is to be done? Without trying to provide definite answers to this question, I will try to make the following speculation: if we want to minimize the use of all those above mentioned moral disengagement strategies (including victim derogation), which can indeed follow a perception of collective responsibility, we should try to individualize rather than collectivize the suffering of victims. I could imagine that being exposed to individual stories of harm and suffering while at the same time being aware of collective violence perpetrated by one’s own group will not facilitate victim derogation. If reminders of collective responsibility are coupled with harm experienced by specific and certain individuals (rather than whole groups) then perception of collective responsibility might only lead to moral responses (such as empathy) and not to victim dehumanization. However, this assumption needs to be empirically investigated in the future.
Another way of avoiding negative implications of reminders of collective responsibility could be by making people aware that they dehumanize others. It could be argued that making people aware of their own tendency to dehumanize others would lead to a need to restore one’s own image. Hence, making people aware that they are engaged in dehumanization of those who have suffered as a consequence of their group’s actions might provoke endorsement for victim compensation in order to repair the distorted self image. If such an endorsement for reparation behaviour is motivated by the need for image restoration, then feelings of shame could potentially underlie this motivation (e.g., Brown et al., 2008). However, all these hypotheses require further experimental research. Such research might lead to valuable further insights and ultimately result in a useful integration of theories of intergroup emotions and theories of moral disengagement. The continued perpetration of barbaric and inhumane acts in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere gives the need for such research more than usual urgency.
References
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1Although I am aware that the use of notions such as perpetrator group(s) and/or victim group(s) is indeed simplifying some of the issues raised and discussed throughout the text, it nevertheless eases some of the empirical explanations to follow. In short, perpetrator group is defined as a group whose members have committed massive, collectively planned and organized, harm towards members of the other (victim) group in the name of that group. Hence, a group whose members have committed collective crimes defined as crimes including collective intent, collective consciousness about that particular intent, organized collective effort for the conduct of atrocities and finally collective awareness of the potential consequences of atrocities, is a group referred to as the perpetrator (or offender) group. The group whose members have suffered as a consequence of the above mentioned collective crimes is referred to as the victim group.
2Secondary emotions, such as pride, love, guilt, and remorse, vs. primary emotions (such as anger or fear) are considered to be more complex and difficult to detect based solely on facial expressions. The capacity to feel secondary emotions (independent of their valence) is thought to be one of the characteristics that make us human (Leyens et al., 2000). Hence, secondary emotions are considered to be uniquely human emotions (Demoulin et al., 2004).
