Cooperation

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PeaceTest Theory

The number of ongoing armed conflicts in the world has increased over the years. At the same time, the conflicts have become smaller and more brutal. International terrorism is considered a more probable threat than traditional war. Human rights issues, international treaties and common sense are far too often set aside in the fight against international terrorism.

Moral disengagement

Albert Bandura, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, is well-known for his social-cognitive theory and especially his studies on aggression and violence. Bandura has proposed a theoretical explanation for how public attitudes and opinions influence collective violence. According to Bandura, violent actions are evoked through a process of 'moral disengagement' in which the normal inhibitions of violence are deactivated through specific cognitive processes.

The moral disengagement theory involves the following processes:

1) Moral Justification
The invocation of rights or necessities that make it acceptable to use violence in threatening circumstances. This process is clearly illustrated in the attitude that dishonor requires a violent response. Moral justification is facilitated if it appears that some violence is needed now to prevent a larger amount of anticipated violence later. Injurious actions are made more acceptable when nonviolent options are judged to be ineffective for achieving morally justified objectives.
2) Displacement and diffusion of responsibility
Obscuring or minimizing the agentive role in the harm one causes. People will behave in ways they normally repudiate if a legitimate authority accepts responsibility for the effects of their conduct. Group decisions or division of labour diminish the sense of responsibility on an individual level.
3) Disregard of consequences
People minimize the consequences of acts they are responsible for. It is easier to hurt others when they are not visible. Superiors who make decisions are removed from those who follow orders.
4) Dehumanization
To perceive the enemy in terms of common humanity activates empathetic emotional reactions through perceived similarity and a sense of social obligation. People find violence easier if they don't consider there victims as human beings.
5) Euphemistic labeling
Sanitizing language or the agentless passive style in depicting events. Euphemistic labelling is widely used to make harmful conduct respectable and to reduce personal responsibility.
6) Distortion/minimization of consequences
As long as harmful results of one's conduct are ignored, minimized, distorted or disbelieved, there is little reason for self-censure to be activated, e.g., when reports of military actions minimize human suffering.

In warfare the extent of killing and brutality is determined by ideology and custom. While these ideologies have been extensively studied by historians, quantitative research has been more limited and unsystematic. Population surveys in the US and Latin America have studied different opinions and cultural attitudes related to collective violence. There have been many polls that have measured the public's opinion about war and feelings toward other countries. Some of the results have indicated that most Americans feel that World War I, World War II, the Revolutionary war, the Persian Gulf war, and the Civil war were justified, while the Vietnam war was not perceived as a just war. Some international studies have focused more generally on attitudes toward war and opinions about defense mechanisms and nuclear arms. Other surveys have examined attitudes and feelings toward different national enemies. McAlister et al. have shown that public attitudes about the necessity of war are related both to specific opinions about military action and to national levels of military expenditure. In this study of attitudes in cities of nine nations in Europe and the western hemisphere, general support for war was found to be highest in Texas and lowest in Costa Rica.

Bandura's concept of moral disengagement provides a useful framework for understanding and measuring cultural norms that may influence collective violence. While the surveys cited above have measured some aspects of the process of moral disengagement, the concepts have not been systematically studied in international comparative research. Data from national comparative studies can be used to promote public discussion of both national tendencies and specific international conflicts. International measurement and comparative analysis of attitudes toward violence may help predict national reactions to conflict, and identify situations where efforts for preventing moral disengagement can help deter wars and civil disturbances.

Alfred McAlister, Professor of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas, has created the PeaceTest scale, which is based on Bandura's theory. He assumes that the inhibitions on violence are deactivated through a number of discrete cognitive processes, which were mentioned above, and that these processes are measurable. According to McAlister, the scale discriminates between national groups, and the scale scores are also significant predictors of support for specific military actions.

On this basis, McAlister has been trying to develop a method for reducing the degree of support for military force or other violent actions, and of promoting the use of peaceful solutions. The idea is to help young people learn how to resist arguments invoking processes of moral disengagement, and thereby 'inoculate' them against different forms of mass violence. We have chosen to expand the PeaceTest not only to measure attitudes towards war and violence, but also towards human rights and racism, since the root causes of violence often lie in poverty, hopelessness, prejudice, injustice and hatred. However, the same method can be used to raise the awareness on these topics as well.

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PeaceTest Theory

Moral disengagement

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