Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Cottrell, Catherine

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

As noted in the saying “all is fair in love and war”, people can sometimes justify immoral actions. Moral disengagement, a concept created by Albert Bandura, proposes humans defend immoral actions to protect a moral identity and minimize aversive emotions like guilt. This is a term that can be applied to intergroup violence when we defend the immoral actions of our country. My thesis explores whether the timing of an intergroup conflict can affect the way humans feel collective guilt and moral disengagement. 247 American participants were primed to think in historical or present terms with a paragraph detailing a conflict between Iraq and the United States. Time was not a significant influential factor in the process of morally disengaging from wrongdoings in the conflict or the experience of collective guilt. However, the national and political identity of participants influenced moral disengagement and collective guilt scores. Participants who glorified their country and viewed the United States as superior to all other countries had higher moral disengagement scores and lower collective guilt scores than participants who did not glorify their country. This is important because moral disengagement and collective guilt can influence post-war decisions, like demands for justice. The more guilt humans feel, the more likely they are to demand justice for the wrongdoings of their country.

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