Dehumanizing or demonizing the other (Moral disengagement, part 7)

Photo of antisemitic Nazi propaganda
Antisemitic Nazi Propaganda. (Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license. From WikiMedia Commons)

Dehumanizing or demonizing the other is a particularly common form of moral disengagement, especially during wartime or other types of conflict.

Another moral disengagement mechanism described by psychologist Albert Bandura, it refers to portraying your enemy as less than human, as some sort of vile creature.

During World War II, all factions in the conflict created posters of the enemy as a subhuman monster. In addition, propaganda and feature films of that era–as well as during the Cold War and the Vietnam War–stereotyped, sub-humanized, dehumanized, and demonized the enemy.

Consider this quote: “…[This nation is] aiming at the exclusive domination of the [world], lost in corruption, [characterized by] deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world.”

Who do you think said that? To what nation was he referring?

The answer to the first question is Thomas Jefferson, in 1815, when he was President. The nation in question was Great Britain. Imagine what might have happened if weapons of mass destruction were available back then. Suppose Jefferson, as President, pushed Congress for a preemptive strike against Great Britain. Would a more peaceful world have been achieved?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.

Ecological approach to studying peace and war

It is unlikely that the human capacity for inhumanity can ever be adequately explained by any one theory. We believe that all behavior is multi-determined—that is, many forces at a variety of levels contribute to any one type of behavior, including aggression.

We subscribe to what has been called an ecological approach to understanding complex behaviors. This approach involves constructs reflecting different contexts that influence individuals and are in turn influenced by those individuals. That set of constructs includes: the macrosystem, the exosystem, the microsystem, and the individual.

For example, an individual’s concerns about “national security” are influenced by:

  • The values and mass media positions of the society at large (the macrosystem)
  • The views expressed in places of worship, neighborhood, and more local media (the exosystem)
  • Lessons promulgated within the home and family (the microsystem)

Moreover, individuals bring to all of their interactions their own genetic heritage and the results of their personal experiences, beginning in the womb. Sometimes that heritage and those experiences can lead individuals to behave in ways that change the microsystem, or the exosystem, or the macrosystem. Think of Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King.

Consider also your own views on national security, on torture, on terrorism. How many influences on those views, at what levels of experience, can you identify?

In our next post, we start considering psychological theories that focus on thoughts and emotions that individuals bring to their interactions, as well as the thoughts and emotions they carry away from those interactions.

Individuals’ tendencies to incorporate ideas from the different environments in which they grow and to which they adapt can lead to a great deal of ingroup and outgroup thinking that can provide a basis for enduring conflict.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology