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Killing with a Clean Conscience: Existential Angst and the Paradox of Morality

Gilad Hirschberger

Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya

Tom Pyszczynski

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

"Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the

basis of morality.”—Thomas Jefferson

Two thousand years ago, in the wake of the unsuccessful Bar Kochbah revolt against the

Romans, a debate ensued between the disciples of two Jewish sages, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi

Ishmael. The students of Rabbi Akiva, a messianic ultra-nationalist who inspired the revolt

against the Romans, interpreted their teacher's position to say that the laws and restrictions of the

bible pertain only to fellow Jews and do not apply to interactions with non-Jews. Rabbi Ishmael,

a universalist who advocated moderation and dialogue with the Romans, delivered a starkly

different message to his disciples and emphasized the "humanness" of all people. He contended

that biblical law was intended for all people, and that “thou shalt not kill” applies to Jews and

non-Jews alike (Arad, 2010, personal communication).

This ancient debate reflects a conflict between competing conceptions of morality that

persists today. To whom should moral consideration be extended? In most intergroup conflicts,

each side views its opposition to the other as a morally righteous and religiously sanctioned

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response to the evils of the other side. Thus, the moral issues that arise in the context of clashes

between groups often hark back to the ancient debate between Rabbis Akiva and Ishmael.

Our discussion is intended to shed light on issues that have been debated by generations

of theologians, moral philosophers, and social scientists. Do morals encourage people to

transcend egotistical concerns and consider the condition of the "other," or do they serve the

opposite function of glorifying one's self-image and group’s status under the guise of benevolent

concern? Do morals reflect context-dependent and relativistic prescriptions for human behavior

or universal rules of human conduct? How can people commit acts, under the guise of moral

righteousness, that most post outsiders would view as immoral and even evil? How do the group-

level and individual-level functions of moral behavior relate to each other?

In this chapter we focus primarily on the role of moral concerns in intergroup conflicts

and the potential of moral principles to both defuse and intensify conflicts between groups.

Paradoxically, moral strivings often increase the viciousness of interactions between people with

different group identities, partly because of the diverse moral principles cultures use to govern

behavior. Although moral principles are typically thought of as promoting more humane and

other-oriented behavior (e.g., Aquino et al., 2009), they can also promote the defense of one’s

own group, which often includes vanquishing another group, perceived as evil. To shed light on

these issues, we use terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon,

1997) to explain how moral principles, which promote group cohesion, are used by in the self-

regulation of individuals (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1981). We suggest that moral behavior

involves implicit calculations aimed at enabling an individual to maintain self-esteem by means

of enhancing a moral self-image. This often entails sacrificing one set of moral values for

another, which in many cases leads to a ‘righteous’ crusade or jihad against another group.

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We begin with an overview of TMT and consider contemporary theories of morality

through the lens of this perspective. We then discuss how terror management concerns affect the

self-regulatory processes through which people control their own behavior to meet the dictates of

their culture. We then describe ongoing research on terror management and morality that

examines moral perceptions and judgments in the context of intractable political conflict. In light

of this research, we go back to the fundamental question of whether there are universal

conceptions of right, wrong, good, and evil, and whether moral concerns can influence the course

of violent intractable political conflict.

Terror Management Theory

TMT contends that the uniquely human awareness of the inevitability of personal death

generates the potential for overwhelming terror because it frustrates the very basic desire to live.

This potential for terror drives people to construct their reality in a way that infuses life with

meaning, value, and hope of transcending death. Terror management research has demonstrated

that investing in a cultural worldview and defending it against threats is an essential means of

defending against existential terror. Cultural worldviews are symbolic, social constructions of

reality that (a) imbue life with meaning and order, and answer basic questions about existence;

(b) establish standards of value that if met provide a sense of personal self-esteem and group

value; and (c) give hope of life continuing after physical death, either literally in the form of an

afterlife or symbolically in the form of contributions to something greater and more enduring

than the physical self. Thus, to achieve psychological equanimity in the face of mortality, people

need to feel that they are valuable contributors to a meaningful and important world as defined

by their culture.

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Because this protection from existential terror is provided by ideas, concepts, values, and

symbols, the existence of others who share one’s worldview lends credibility to it and increases

its ability to protect one from anxiety. Problems arise, however, when one encounters people or

ideas that threaten the validity of cherished beliefs about oneself and one's group because this

undermines the social consensus supporting one’s worldview and self-esteem, thereby reducing

their ability to quell anxiety.

To cope with the threat to emotional security posed by groups with different worldviews,

people often try to convert others to their worldview (e.g., missionary work) or incorporate the

non-threatening aspects of a competing worldview into their own pre-existing worldview (e.g.,

the recent increase in the popularity of Americanized Middle-Eastern food). Another strategy is

to derogate the adherents of competing worldviews (e.g., referring to Islam as an "evil religion")

or to employ violent means to defeat or completely annihilate those who pose a significant

challenge to one's core beliefs. Although most wars and violent conflicts involve disputes over

territory, resources, or other concrete issues, they also invariably involve a clash of worldviews.

We argue that protecting oneself from existential fear motivates violent, aggressive responses

when worldviews are challenged. Perceiving a severe threat to core beliefs and values often

precipitates a lifting of moral prohibitions against killing that exist in the vast majority of

cultures.

Empirical Support for TMT

To date over 400 studies conducted in diverse cultures in over 21 countries have

provided convergent evidence for hypotheses derived from TMT (see Greenberg, Solomon, &

Arndt, 2008, for a comprehensive review). Much of this evidence comes from studies showing

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that reminders of death (mortality salience, or MS) cause people to bolster their defenses of their

cultural worldview, in an effort to defend self-esteem, and to maintain their close relationships.

Research has also implicated terror management processes in promoting violent solutions

to political conflicts. Specifically, MS primes (a) increased support among American

conservatives for extreme military interventions in the “war on terror,” including nuclear and

chemical weapons that would kill thousands of civilians (Pyszczynski et al., 2006, Study 1); (b)

increased support among Iranian students for suicidal terrorism against Western targets

(Pyszczynski, et al., 2006, Study 2); (c) increased support among Israelis for a pre-emptive

nuclear strike on Iran (Hirschberger, Pyszczynski, & Ein-Dor, 2009); and (d) increased Israelis'

support of violent retributions for acts of violence conducted against them, even if the acts of

violence were deemed ineffective (Hirschberger, Pyszczynski, & Ein-Dor, 2010). These studies

suggest that in times of war and terrorist threat, when death-related concerns are likely to be

more prominent than usual, and when hostility toward one’s culture on the part of another group

is rampant, people are especially likely to consider violent solutions attractive as means of

resolving conflicts.

This research implies that when increased protection from existential fear is needed due

to increased salience of death and vulnerability, as is typically the case in times of war and

conflict, people will work especially hard to meet the standards prescribed by their cultural

worldviews. But cultural worldviews and the standards they prescribe are complex and multi-

faceted. According to theories of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier, 1981), self-regulatory efforts

are oriented toward meeting whichever of the many standards a person holds is most salient or

accessible at the time. From a terror management perspective, conflict and war highlight the need

to defeat an opposing worldview, but also to perceive one's group as having the upper moral

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hand. Because violence against another group is often at odds with values of compassion, or with

self-perceptions of moral superiority, managing conflicting moral motivations may explain the

many paradoxes that violent conflict entails.

Research has demonstrated that even in the context of violent political conflict,

highlighting moral values that promote peaceful attitudes such as compassion (Rothschild,

Abdolhossein, & Pyszczynski, 2009), shared humanity with others (Pyszczynski et al., 2010),

and secular pacifist norms (Jonas et al., 2008, Study 2) can moderate the impact of MS on

support for violent solutions to conflict. For example, Pyszczynski et al. (2010) found that

inducing Americans, Palestinian citizens of Israel, or Israeli Jews to consider the shared global

consequences of climate change reversed the increase in support for violence that MS produced

under control conditions, causing MS to increase support for peace, and these effects emerged

even at the height of Israeli military action in Gaza in 2009. These findings suggest that in

addition to encouraging defense of one’s worldview, which sometimes involves increased

hostility toward outgroup members, reminders of death also encourage greater adherence to

fundamental cultural values, which in most cases include sanctions against violence and

encouragement of compassion for others. Although most people in modern cultures think of

violence as immoral and peace-making and compassion as moral, recent theories of moral

behavior suggest that both forms of behavior can stem from striving for morality.

Fundamental Foundations of Morality

Moral foundations theory (Haidt & Graham, 2007) identifies five foundational themes

that characterize the moral domain: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty,

authority/respect, and purity/sanctity (for a full description of the five themes see Graham &

Haidt, this volume). From this perspective, gut level moral intuitions are the primary cause of

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reactions to morally significant persons and situations, and they play an important role in driving

more abstract moral reasoning. Haidt and Graham argue that all humans react emotionally, to a

greater or lesser extent, to behavior and situations that impinge on all five of these dimensions of

morality. They also argue that whereas politically liberal individuals are especially committed to

the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity dimension, conservatives are roughly equally committed

to all five, which means the place more emphasis than do liberals on ingroup/loyalty,

authority/respect, and purity/sanctity (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009).

Looking back at over 25 years of terror management research in light of Haidt and

Graham's (2007) conceptualization suggests that moral concerns have been a primary focus of

this research and are likely to be important sources of protection from existential anxiety. For

instance, in the first TMT study (Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon ,1989),

municipal court judges who were reminded of their own mortality recommended higher bonds

for an alleged prostitute compared to judges in the control condition, especially if the judges

were morally opposed to prostitution. This finding indicates that MS increases moral judgments

that involve Haidt and Graham's (2007) purity dimension. Research conducted by Goldenberg

and her colleagues (e.g., Cox et al., 2007; Goldenberg et al., 2001) indicates that MS increases

feelings of disgust towards various bodily functions and sensations – further suggesting that

death concerns amplify responses related to the moral purity dimension.

Research pertaining to the fairness dimension of morality has shown that MS increases

concerns with fairness (van den Bos & Miedema, 2000), such as greater agreement with hate-

crime legislation (Lieberman, Arndt, Personious, & Cook, 2001; Study 1). But other research

indicates that MS leads to more blaming of innocent victims (Hirschberger, 2006). Thus, it

appears that MS does not necessarily lead people to support the fair treatment of others. Rather,

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it increases the motivation to believe in a just world and act in a manner that supports this belief

– in some cases showing compassion and in other cases setting it aside (Hirschberger, 2009).

Just as MS does not indiscriminately increase the desire for fairness, it also does not

uniformly increase the motivation to care for others. Research indicates that MS increases

prosocial responses only toward worldview-relevant causes (Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, &

Pyszczynski, 2002), and only when the prosocial cause is perceived as non-threatening

(Hirschberger, Ein-Dor, & Almakias, 2008). Thus, MS increases other-oriented responses most

clearly when they benefit one’s own group, worldview, or self-esteem. When the prosocial cause

is non-beneficial or even threatening to oneself, death concerns often induce selfish,

ethnocentric, or callous responses to the plight of others (Hirschberger, 2009).

Research also shows that death concerns influence responses to those high and low on

social hierarchies corresponding to Haidt and Graham's authority dimension. For example,

Landau et al. (2004) found that MS led to increased support for President George W. Bush in the

months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, and Cohen et al.

(2004) found that MS increased support for a hypothetical charismatic leader over a merely

competent one.

Perhaps the most thoroughly investigated influence of death concerns on morality is in

the realm of intergroup relations. Numerous terror management studies have shown that MS

increases in-group loyalty and out-group rejection (for a review see Greenberg et al., 2008).

Recently, this research has been extended to the study of political conflict and to the morality-

laden decisions people make when deciding how to deal with an adversarial group (e.g.,

Hirschberger & Pyszczynski, in press).

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Moral foundations theory seems particularly useful in understanding recent TMT findings

related to political conflict, because ethical and moral dilemmas involve conflicts between

different specific moral standards to which individuals are committed to varying degrees, and

between the welfare of the individual, the in-group, and the out-group (Haidt & Graham, 2007).

Because behavior is regulated on an individual level and is motivated by the death anxiety

aroused when individuals feel they are falling short of their moral standards, these conflicts are

usually resolved by doing whatever is most likely to enable one to view oneself as a moral

person. In this sense, moral behavior often appears to be selfish or ethnocentric. This tendency is

exacerbated by the importance that cultures and individuals place on morality over other

dimensions of personal value (e.g., Baumeister, 1991; Haidt & Kesbir, 2007).

We suggest that moral values are imbued with such extreme significance because, in the

vast majority of cultures, they are seen as having been directly delivered to humankind by a deity

that can provide or refuse access to literal immortality. Cultures began to link moral behavior to

one’s fate after death very early in the history of religion (Wright, 2009). This contingency

between moral behavior and one’s fate after death was a powerful inducement to look beyond

one’s selfish concerns to the welfare of others, at least others in one’s own group. If the absolute

annihilation that death might entail is the ultimate fear, then the promise of continued life after

death is the ultimate incentive for behavior that benefits the group. We suspect that the

juxtaposition of a supernatural force with concerns about cleanliness, purity, and disgust might

have been a human innovation that gained popularity, in part, because of the increased control it

gave group leaders over members.

Cleanliness – in all of its meanings – is next to godliness! And human beings want to be

as close to the gods as they can get. As Goldenberg et al. (2001) suggested, one of the primary

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means through which people deny their mortality is by distancing themselves from other

animals, denying their creatureliness, and imbuing their lives with a spiritual dimension. All

three major Western religions subscribe to the belief that “God gave man dominion over all

things” (Genesis 1:26). By construing human life as rooted in a spiritual realm, people distance

themselves from and elevate themselves above everything that dies. A large body of research has

documented the role that spiritual longings and distancing oneself from animals play in denying

death (for a review, see Goldenberg et al., 2001).

We contend that this concordance of in-group loyalty with maintaining purity plays a

significant role in the moral processes that govern intractable intergroup conflicts. In the next

section we consider how the regulation of moral behavior can both inflame and defuse such

conflicts. We focus especially on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which impinges in

various ways on the entire world.

Morality in Times of Conflict

Moral issues lie at the heart of virtually all intergroup conflicts. Although selfish and

ethnocentric desires for resources, territory, and tangible goods are usually involved, what is

typically at stake is who has the right to these things, who deserves them, who has treated whom

unfairly, and how the deity wants these resources to be distributed. Given the security that people

acquire from viewing themselves as morally righteous, it is no surprise that all sides to conflicts

construe themselves as righteously fighting against undeserving, unjust, evil usurpers of their

rights, a fight in which the deity and all that is good are invested in their victory.

War and violent conflict diminish a person’s ability to achieve a balance between one’s

own interests and the needs of others, because during conflicts the stakes are high and threat

looms large. Consequently, the motivation to uphold a moral self sometimes leads people to

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construe the conflict in a way that enables them to maintain a moral self-image while engaging in

behavior that violates even their most sacred values. Terror-management concerns play a role in

the processes of moral amplification, moral disengagement, and the maintenance of moral

identity, all of which serve to justify acts of dubious morality.

Moral Amplification

Moral amplification refers to "the motivated separation and exaggeration of good and evil

in the explanation of behavior" (Haidt & Algoe, 2004, p. 323). In times of war and elevated

violence, moral amplification is a powerful justification mechanism, because people are

motivated to view conflict as a battle of light against darkness in which they or their group are

guardians of the light. This leads them to dismiss complex explanations that include a

consideration of the grievances of the other side and to avoid considering ways that their own

group may have contributed to the perpetuation of conflict. We contend that this need to perceive

the other as the epitome of evil is not driven by an objective appraisal of the facts, but by the

existential benefits of ingroup loyalty and purity (Haidt & Graham, 2007).

Research suggests that when death is salient moral amplification increases. First, MS

increases the need for a structured, meaningful world and decreases tolerance for ambiguity

(Landau, Johns, et al., 2004). These findings suggest that under conditions of MS, people prefer

to perceive the world in clear-cut terms, with little ambiguity or complexity. Second, MS is

known to increase punishment meted out to legal and moral transgressors (Florian & Mikulincer,

1997; Rosenblatt et al., 1989), and to increase the need to believe in a just world (Hirschberger,

2006). These findings suggest that the perception of a structured and unambiguous world

facilitates the exaggeration of differences between good and evil.

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Recently, we have collected data directly linking moral amplification to the Middle East

conflict. This research indicated that reminders of death and the Holocaust led Israeli Jews to

perceive Israeli Arabs as having malevolent intentions toward them and toward the State of Israel

(Hirschberger, Canetti, Pyszczynski, Kahn & Gubler , 2010). When death was salient, Israeli

Jews simplified the complex identity of Israeli Arabs, who are typically torn between their

conflicting identities as Palestinians and Israelis (e.g., Kimhi, Canetti, & Hirschberger, 2009),

and preferred to perceive them in simple, clear-cut terms -- as enemies of Israel. This process of

moral amplification via social categorization may support discriminatory attitudes toward

minority groups.

Moral Disengagement

Given the nearly universal moral injunctions against harming others, it may not be

enough to amplify and exaggerate moral differences between us and them. Research conducted

in the past two decades suggests that an additional mechanism, moral disengagement, often

facilitates support for violent conduct. In the words of Albert Bandura “self-sanction plays a

central role in the regulation of inhumane conduct … self-sanctions can be disengaged by

reconstruing conduct as serving moral purposes, by obscuring personal agency in detrimental

activities, by disregarding or misrepresenting the injurious consequences of one’s actions, or by

blaming and dehumanizing the victim” (1998, p. 161). All of these activities help to justify

transgressions against humane moral values.

Moral disengagement has been studied in the context of war and terrorism and was found

to be positively related to support for military attacks against Iraq and Yugoslavia (McAlister,

2001), and to be related to support for harsher punishments for the perpetrators of the 9/11

attacks (Aquino, Reed, Thau, & Freeman, 2007). In a large, representative US sample studied at

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the time of the 9/11 attacks, moral disengagement completely mediated the influence of the

September 11 attacks on support for immediate retaliatory strikes (McAlister, Bandura, & Owen,

2006). Based on research showing that reminding Americans of the 9/11 attacks increases the

accessibility of death-related thoughts (Landau et al., 2004), McAlister et al.’s findings (2006)

can be viewed as a dramatic field demonstration of the influence of death reminders on support

for retaliatory violence.

One of the central mechanisms of moral disengagement is dehumanization -- divesting

the victim of all human qualities. Research has shown that dehumanization of a target increases

aggressiveness towards the target (Bandura, Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, & Regalia, 2001),

and that when a group is dehumanized people do not feel obliged to apply moral standards to

them (e.g., Bar-Tal, 1990). However, anti-racist norms and self-monitoring are likely to prevent

people from endorsing blatant dehumanization. Instead, they are more likely to view victimized

others as less than fully human or as infrahuman. Studies of infrahumanization using a subtle

task examining the attribution of emotions to in-group and out-group members (Leyens et al.,

2000) has shown that reminding people of killings conducted by their group led them to

infrahumanize the victimized group (Castano & Giner-Sorolla, 2006).

Infrahumanization serves a central role in the TMT analysis of moral behavior not only

because thoughts of death increase the derogation of worldview violators, but also because the

need to elevate oneself and one's group above animal creatureliness and to affirm one's unique,

non-animalistic humanity serves an important existential function (Goldenberg et al., 2001). In

support of the role of these processes in infrahumanization, research has shown that MS

increased humanization of the in-group in three studies conducted with people from three

different cultures (Vess, Heflick, & Goldenberg, 2008).

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In a related vein, a provocative study has recently indicated that the deaths of outgroup

members who threaten one’s worldview can serve a terror management function (Hayes,

Schimel, & Williams, 2008). In this study, Christian participants read either a worldview-

threatening news article about the Muslimization of Nazareth or a non-threatening article. Half of

the participants were informed at the end of the article that a large group of Muslims had died in

a recent plane crash on their way to Nazareth. Results indicated that reading about the

Muslimization of Nazareth increased the accessibility of death-related thoughts and the defense

of participants' Christian worldview. However, these increases were not observed among

participants who learned that many Muslims died in a plane crash. This finding suggests that not

only does MS facilitate the use of lethal violence against out-group members, as previous

dehumanization research had shown, but also that the death of worldview violators can be

soothing and reassuring. This disturbing finding may explain the bloodthirsty nature of much

violent conflict.

However, there is also a more optimistic side to the TMT-infrahumanization link. Motyl,

Hart, and Pyszczynski (2010) recently demonstrated that whereas MS increased support for a

pre-emptive strike on Iran among Americans high in religious fundamentalism, when violence

was infrahumanized – described as an animalistic behavior that humans share with other animals

– MS no longer increased support for violence. Thus, when faced with the association between

violence and animality, MS led participants to view violence as repugnant. This finding suggests

that the same desire to view oneself as a transcendent spiritual being that sometimes increases

violence toward an outgroup can also be used as an antidote to such violence.

If one way to reduce intergroup violence is by infrahumanizing violence, another way

might be to humanize an adversarial out-group. A series of studies conducted on Americans,

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Israeli Arabs, and Israeli Jews demonstrated that when people are induced to consider the shared

humanity between their group and other groups, MS decreases support of violence and increases

support for peace and reconciliation between groups (Pyszczynski et al., 2010).

The Paradox of Moral Identity

Recent research documents a variety of ways in which the motivation to maintain a

positive moral identity can lead to behavior that is callous or even harmful to others. Moral

identity refers to the extent to which moral beliefs and values are either chronically present or

contextually activated, and it has been shown to influence moral conduct. Moral identity is

generally thought to promote the upholding of moral standards (Blasi, 1984). Consistent with

this view, research has indicated that construing one’s moral identity as important results in

greater concern for the needs and welfare of others (Aquino & Reed, 2002). It seems that a

strong moral identity fosters a more inclusive attitude toward others and extends group

boundaries to include people who are typically excluded from one’s in-group (see Haslam, this

volume). Because people are motivated to maintain self-consistency (e.g., Blasi, 1984), those

with a strong moral identity should be motivated to uphold moral values and behave as moral

exemplars in order to maintain a positive self-image (Aquino, Freeman, Reed, Lim, & Felps,

2009). Moreover, when the accessibility of one’s moral identity is enhanced, moral behaviors

should be more likely.

Research generally supports this idea and indicates that priming moral identity increases

intentions to behave in a prosocial manner (Aquino et al., 2009). In a conceptually similar study,

participants seized the opportunity to behave unethically when it was possible, unless they were

first asked to read a moral code, which eliminated these effects (Shu et al., 2009). Reading the

moral code presumably activated participants’ moral identities, which reduced unethical

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behavior. Priming moral identity may also counter the effects of moral disengagement in

response to war crimes committed by one’s in-group (Aquino et al., 2007).

However, recent research suggests that it may be premature to conclude that activating a

person’s moral identity always increases prosocial behavior. Because behaving ethically

enhances moral identity, the motivation to behave ethically following a moral identity boost may

actually be diminished because the need to view oneself as a moral person has already been

satisfied. In this case a strong sense of moral identity may ironically license unethical attitudes

and behaviors (Mazar & Zhong, 2010). Research supports this contention and indicates that after

participants acted in a gender-egalitarian manner and validated their moral identity, they

subsequently displayed more gender-discriminatory behavior (Monin & Miller, 2001, and

Chapter X, this volume). Apparently, behaving morally satisfied moral identity needs and

diminished the motivation to continue behaving morally. In another study, reminding people of

their humanitarian nature reduced charitable donations (Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, 2009).

Moreover, in a study of environmental values and behaviors (Mazar & Zhang, in press), although

mere exposure to “green” (environmentally friendly) products increased prosocial inclinations,

purchasing green products had the ironic licensing effect of lowering prosocial behavior and

inducing more cheating and stealing. This study revealed an important distinction between

activating constructs related to moral issues, which may induce prosocial attitudes and behaviors,

and engaging in actual moral behaviors, which may have the ironic effect of licensing

subsequent conduct that ignores others’ welfare.

The licensing effect of immoral behavior seems particularly relevant to political conflict

because the motivation to justify morally questionable behavior may be elevated. The tendency

to morally amplify the righteousness of one’s group and one’s cause in times of conflict is likely

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to increase this licensing effect. In a series of studies, we (Hirschberger & Pyszczynski, 2010)

examined whether MS had different effects on the moral attitudes of Israeli political hawks and

doves with regard to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and whether moral identity

primes would moderate the effect. The research was conducted several months after the outbreak

of violence between Israelis and Palestinians in 2009.

In the first study, we assessed the moderating effect of participants' political orientation

on the impact of MS on responses to a particularly salient moral dilemma – justifying civilian

casualties. Participants were randomly assigned to an MS or pain-salience condition and read a

vignette that described Palestinian civilian casualties during the conflict in Gaza. Results

confirmed our expectations that right-wing, hawkish participants would respond to MS with

greater justification of civilian casualties, whereas those with a left-wing, dovish orientation

exhibited the opposite effect.

In the next study, we examined whether priming moral identity moderates the impact of

death reminders on moral attitudes. Because the moral dilemma in question pertained to the

conduct of an entire group, and not that of a specific individual, we believed that group moral

identity was especially relevant and we therefore primed group moral identity. For similar

reasons, we chose to prime a reminder of collective death – the Holocaust instead of one’s own

death. Participants were first assigned to read a Talmudic passage that either characterized the

Jewish people as a charitable and compassionate nation (moral condition) or a passage warning

against displaying too much compassion and advising that showing compassion to the cruel is

akin to being cruel to the compassionate (control condition). Then participants were assigned to

either a Holocaust salience or a control pain salience condition and completed the measure of

justifying civilian casualties that was used in Study 1.

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Among participants who were not primed with moral identity, those with a right-wing

orientation responded to the Holocaust prime by rating civilian casualties as more justified than

those with a left-wing political orientation, replicating the findings of Study 1. However, much to

our initial dismay, the moral identity primes increased justification of civilian casualties in the

Holocaust salience condition among left-wing participants to the level expressed by right-wing

participants. It appears that moral identity primes had a paradoxical effect on the resolution of

moral dilemmas by reducing the discrepancy between participants’ desire to view themselves as

moral and the morally questionable attitude that Palestinian civilian casualties are acceptable.

The fact that this effect was most pronounced among left-wing participants is consistent with

other findings from this line of research indicating that such persons generally find civilian

casualties less morally acceptable. Thus, when confronted with moral violations by their group,

reading Talmudic passages that bolstered their sense of the morality of their group may have

ironically facilitated shifting away from their typical moral stance of viewing civilian casualties

as wrong.

To clarify the processes involved in this effect, we conducted another study in which we

primed moral identity and examined whether moral disengagement would mediate the effects of

MS on the justification of civilian casualties during conflict. To extend the generality of our

findings to individual moral identity, we used Aquino et al.'s (2007) individual moral identity

manipulation. To get a clearer picture of the role of death concerns, we used a standard MS

manipulation rather than the manipulation of Holocaust salience, because the latter was likely to

arouse a multitude of thoughts and feelings in our Israeli Jewish sample. In addition, we

measured two facets of Bandura's (1986) conceptualization of moral disengagement – moral

justification and advantageous comparison. The dependent variable was based on the same

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questions regarding the justification of civilian casualties used in the previous studies. Results

indicated that MS increased moral justification, advantageous comparison, and the justification

of civilian casualties, and that this occurred primarily in the moral identity condition –

replicating the findings of Study 2. Moreover, the impact of MS on the justification of civilian

casualties was significantly mediated by moral justification. These results support our claim that

the paradoxical influence of priming moral identity when death is salient involves processes of

moral disengagement that facilitate the justification of morally objectionable conduct.

We suspected that one of the reasons that priming moral identity in our studies increased

rather than decreased support for indiscriminant violence was that all of our studies referred to

violent acts that had already been committed. Moral dilemmas regarding past events may be

viewed by participants as counterfactual and as requiring pointless moral agonizing. Because

history cannot be changed, people may be motivated to justify past group transgressions,

especially when their moral identity has been boosted and their mortality is salient. Thus we

conducted a fourth study to determine whether similar facilitation of future violence by boosting

one’s moral identity would occur. We replicated the design of Study 3 and added an additional

variable: Half of the participants were asked about the 2009 War on Gaza, which took place

before the study was conducted, and the other half were asked to imagine a future violent

outbreak between Israel and the Palestinians. We also measured feelings of shame and guilt

following the reaction to the moral dilemma. We hypothesized that when mortality was salient

and moral identity was not primed, left-wing Israelis would experience greater shame and guilt.

However, when mortality was salient and moral identity was primed, we expected a reduction in

shame and guilt among this group. If this was the case, it would further explain the licensing

20

effect of priming moral identity by showing that the self-conscious emotions that typically

restrain morally questionable behavior are alleviated when moral identity is boosted.

Results in the past-attack (Gaza War) conditions supported our predictions and replicated

our previous findings. MS increased justification of civilian casualties among participants who

were primed with moral identity. These findings indicate, as others have suggested, that

processes of moral disengagement may be invoked retrospectively to justify a prior unethical act

(Anand et al., 2005). In the future-scenario condition, there were no significant effects of MS or

moral identity primes on support of civilian casualties. This suggests that elevating one’s moral

identity is less effective in justifying future indiscriminant violence.

MS and moral identity primes also affected shame and guilt. As expected, MS increased

feelings of shame and guilt for past violence when moral identity was not primed. However,

moral identity primes reduced feelings of shame and guilt in the MS condition. This shows that

moral disengagement facilitates violence by reducing self-conscious emotions reflecting

discomfort with one's own actions or those of one’s in-group. In the future-violence condition we

obtained the opposite response, indicating that MS increased feelings of shame when moral

identity was primed. This finding is in keeping with past research on moral identity primes (e.g.,

Aquino et al., 2007) showing that when focused on possible future transgressions, priming moral

identity inhibits support for immoral conduct.

According to Bandura (1991), most people develop personal standards of moral behavior

that serve a self-regulatory role by promoting good behavior and inhibiting bad behavior.

Behaving in ways that counter these standards results in self-censure and guilt feelings. Thus,

individuals are likely to behave in ways that are consistent with their internal moral standards.

The research described here indicates that past moral violations do not necessarily promote

21

guilty, remorseful behavior. Sometimes people resolve the disparity between moral values and

immoral conduct by rationalizing and justifying past transgressions to reduce the dissonance

between values and behaviors.

This attempt to reconcile the discord between moral self-perceptions and immoral

conduct by cognitively reconstructing the meaning and severity of the transgression has been

labled moral hypocrisy by Batson and his colleagues (e.g., Batson et al., 2002). Moral hypocrisy

occurs when people delude themselves into believing that serving their self-interest does not

violate their moral principles. The greater one is self-deceived in believing that one is moral

despite behaviors that suggest otherwise, the more one seems sincere to others. Therefore, self-

deception in the moral domain is adaptive and enables one to convince oneself and others of

one's moral stature. Our findings are congruent with this definition of moral hypocrisy and

indicate that moral hypocrisy is primarily observed in relation to past conduct.

Conclusions

The ongoing intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians concerns territorial

disputes, differing historical perspectives, and clashing religious beliefs. We contend that

underlying these momentous issues is an existential conflict over truth, identity, belongingness,

and moral righteousness. Both Israelis and Palestinians view themselves as sitting on the edge of

an existential abyss with no margin for error. Under such circumstances, when basic existence

seems to be imperiled, in-group unity and consensus are of utmost importance, dissent is akin to

treason, and empathy toward the other side is seen as weakness and cowardice. Morals play an

important role in the perpetuation of such conflicts, and in conceptualizing conflict as an epic

battle between good and evil. Unfortunately, it seems that to fight and kill fellow human beings it

is necessary to abandon the basic morality of civilized life, and this requires profound mental

22

adjustments. As English poet Wilfred Owen wrote from the trenches of WWI: "Merry it was to

laugh there – / Where death becomes absurd and life absurder / For power was on us when we

slashed bones bare / Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder."

We have shown in this chapter that existential concerns perpetuate and amplify

justification of intergroup violence, but we contend that these same concerns may foster peaceful

relations as well. At this moment in history when "the true enemy is war itself" people may

realize that peaceful attitudes are consistent with individual self-interest and with the moral

values that justify and perpetuate these interests.

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