Moral Exclusion
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Moral exclusion is a psychological process where members of a group view their own group and its norms as superior to others, belittling, marginalizing, excluding, even dehumanizing targeted groups. A distinction should be drawn between active exclusion and omission. The former requires intent and is a form of injustice, known as moral exclusion; while the latter is thoughtlessness. The targeted group is viewed as undeserving of morally mandated rights and protections. When conflict between groups escalates, the in-group/out-group bias between the groups heightens. Severe violence between groups can be either the antecedent or the outcome of moral exclusion. At its extreme it is a bidirectional phenomenon that defies precise origin.


Scholars

* Morton Deutsch; Professor emeritus of psychology and education and founder of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) at the Teachers College at Columbia University, Deutsch conducted studies on cooperation and competition, intergroup relations, conflict resolution, social conformity, and the social psychology of justice during his career. * Susan Opotow; Received her PhD in social psychology from Columbia University in 1987. Opotow's research focuses on moral exclusion that occurs in adolescents' interpersonal conflicts with peers. * Ervin Staub; Emeritus professor of psychology at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Staub was born in Hungary, Staub fled from Nazism and communism to Vienna before making his way to the U.S. where he earned a PhD at Stanford. He is the founding director of the PhD concentration in the psychology of peace and violence at the University of Massachusetts. * Henri Tajfel; Minimal group paradigm shows that "othering" is the basis for discrimination. Tajfel's intention was to create groups with as little meaning as possible and then add meaning to discover at what point discrimination would occur.


History

Throughout the course of history there have been instances in which human beings treat others as less than human and undeserving of equal moral treatment. Occurrences such as the Nazi Genocide during World War II and the African slave trade have led researchers to question whether or not human beings have the tendency to deem others as worthy or unworthy of moral treatment. Furthermore, if it were the case that humans label one another as acceptable or unacceptable and treat each other accordingly, it is important to examine the rationalization that occurs during this process. This is the type of thinking that spurred Morton Deutsch, Susan Opotow and Ervin Staub to investigate the processes of
dehumanization upright=1.2, link=Warsaw Ghetto boy, In his report on the suppression of the Nazi camps as "bandits". file:Abu Ghraib 68.jpg, Lynndie England pulling a leash attached to the neck of a prisoner in Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse, Abu Ghr ...
and moral exclusion.
Susan Sutherland Isaacs Susan Sutherland Isaacs, CBE (née Fairhurst; 24 May 1885 – 12 October 1948; also known as Susan S. Brierley or Ursula Wise) was an English educational psychologist and psychoanalyst. She published studies on the intellectual and social dev ...
, and other members of the object-relations school of psychoanalysis, set the stage for moral exclusion research with the theory that perceiving certain people as allies and others as enemies is intrinsic to human nature. This categorization of persons creates a marked distinction between good and bad, leading to the exclusion of those who are negatively perceived from the
moral community Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
. Deutsch, Opotow and Staub have defined the moral community, or scope of justice, to be a "...psychological boundary for fairness, within which concerns with justice and moral rules govern our conduct". Such exclusion has been thought to be evolutionary, as it is beneficial to individuals to avoid others who are harmful and seek out those that are helpful. Henri Tajfel conducted multiple experiments that returned the conclusion that people's "...actions are unambiguously directed at favouring the members of their ingroup as against the members of the outgroup. Moreover, Tajfel reported that individuals can be placed in an outgroup for any number of reasons, including (but not limited to), "ideology, skin color, age, and cognitive capacity." Given these findings, the assumption can be made that human beings have an innate tendency to classify those around them into definite categories, thereby creating a foundation for exclusion. Once these individuals are outside the scope of justice, they are no longer considered to have the right to fair treatment and
equality Equality generally refers to the fact of being equal, of having the same value. In specific contexts, equality may refer to: Society * Egalitarianism, a trend of thought that favors equality for all people ** Political egalitarianism, in which ...
.


Limitations to existing research

Moral exclusion has few critiques, but research on this phenomenon has limitations. Allen-Collinson's 2009 study on research administrations was purely restricted to an academic setting and therefore was a small-scale project that had limitations regarding restricted population range, and diverse roles of the research administrators that were interviewed. These factors made it difficult to find conclusive results regarding research administrators as being negatively marked due to moral exclusion. Leets' discussion in 2001 regarding moral exclusion and social justice was limited by the restricted population that was being sampled and the possibility for biases occurring within the self-report measures. Specifically, only university students and focus groups were sampled, which could detract from the generalizability of the study. Furthermore, subjects may have responded in a socially desirable fashion when completing the self-report measures that were utilized to determine participants' assessments of a socially sensitive issue. Tileaga reported that there was not significant research pertaining to the process by which certain groups become discriminated against. He propounded, "The issue of precisely how some particulars groups of people become (or are made) the target of prejudice (extreme prejudice) has been under-explored."


Dangers

Every culture has its own set of values for behavior and communication that exist somewhere along a moral continuum. What constitutes the substance of the continuum may differ by culture, although each culture's continuum has two ends. One pole represents the aforementioned, "scope of justice" and the other pole represents what is considered unjust, cruel or dehumanizing within that culture. The root of exclusion begins with basic categorization. The us/them dichotomy is an embedded psychological process, occurring without conscious thought. As humans we make these distinctions repeatedly. Initially, elevating ingroup and diminishing outgroup may occur in inconsequential ways, as demonstrated by Tajifel's minimal group paradigm. Ordinary behaviors function as dynamic processes that shift cultural norms all the time; for example, American men used to wear top hats as part of everyday dress, but John F. Kennedy changed that. Going hat-less is now a social norm. However, seemingly benign changes in behavior can function as an entry point for shifting into a system of destruction. People change through their own actions; practicing new habits, seemingly trivial acts, gradually alter both an individual and a collective psyche. For example, at its inception using the salute, "Heil Hitler," was not explicitly harmful to anyone. Yet scholars now perceive adoption of this greeting as a seminal turning point in the most commonly known system of nefarious acts against a group of people. The innocuous becomes insidious. Because individuals hold positions at various levels of corporate and governmental structures, the institutionalization of particular modes of thinking and behaving happens gradually. When individuals in positions of authority adopt customs they are legitimized. When cultural norms shift toward exclusion of certain groups they can be rationalized; thereby granting legitimization of behavior into the collective consciousness. Ofreneo and de Vela developed a model in 2006 to depict systems of violence situated within a society which are co-created by the social psychological process of moral exclusion, cultural norms that justify violence, and the economic and political hierarchies of power that maintain it. Individuals' psyches function in group norms in three levels of society where moral exclusion roots and recreates itself. At the bottom is the social psychological, within an individual psyche. In the middle of the model is the social cultural, informal group level interaction where behavior is either ignored or applauded which normalizes it or condemned and eradicates it. At the top is the social structure, governments, corporations, and institutions that solidify and reify cultural norms through legislation and policy decisions.


Examples

Moral exclusion includes situations of distinct severity, such as war, genocide, and slavery. Some examples are controversial, like
abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...
,
immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...
, and the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...
. The crux of the matter, invariably, is who has the ability to determine who is worthy of human dignities. In each example, the standard a group or society uses to exclude the other is culturally derived. That is to say, within each culture the criteria for who is cast out is based on particular values. Intercultural differences in the standard exist, but are associated with power within that culture. No setting is immune from marginalizing members. For instance, moral exclusion IS an area of academic study, yet within academia, instances of the phenomena exist. Allen-Collinson in 2009 analyzed moral exclusion among university research administrators. The degradation of research administrators among their academic colleagues is examined and findings indicate that research administrators were being subjected to a dimension of excluding practices; such as, negative labeling and marking. Academic staff had been labeled both informally, and through documentation by their colleagues and administration as "assistant" or "support staff", fundamentally downplaying their skills and expertise. Another dimension of moral exclusion that appeared was the rendering of research administrators as invisible by either excluding them from research related committees as actual academic staff or by not acknowledging their presence in regular staff meetings.


Genocide and war

Genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
is the act of purposefully exterminating a mass of people because of their identification with a particular group. The most commonly known occurrence of genocide is that of the WWII treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis. Nazis took away fundamental rights of Jewish people by forcing them to relocate out of their homes into camps where they were experimented on, tortured, and killed. Following the war in 1948, a
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an International Agreement, international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of ...
. Genocide is not an outdated relic of war, since 1951 there have been dozens of documented horrific Genocides in history; many continue. The decades-old conflict between the
Palestinians Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenou ...
and
Israelis Israelis (; ) are the Israeli citizenship law, citizens and nationals of the Israel, State of Israel. The country's populace is composed primarily of Israeli Jews, Jews and Arab citizens of Israel, Arabs, who respectively account for 75 percen ...
stems from moral exclusion.
Zionism Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...
is an ethno-nationalist ideology predicated on the belief that an extra-territorial population of Jews has a greater claim to the land than indigenous Palestinians. While liberal forms of Zionism are not predicated on moral superiority, extreme forms of Zionism, such as Kahanism, operate on the principle of moral exclusion and the belief that Arabs living in Israel are enemies of Israel and must be eliminated. Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organizations such as
Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...
have also employed eliminationist rhetoric in reaction to the
Nakba The Nakba () is the ethnic cleansing; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their s ...
, Naksa, and continuing
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...
in Gaza. In the central African states of Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo another territorial dispute over resources, land, and ethnic superiority is that of the
Tutsi The Tutsi ( ), also called Watusi, Watutsi or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu languages, Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi ( ...
and
Hutu The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic group native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda where they form one of the principal ethnic groups alongside the Tutsi and the Great L ...
peoples. Although a National policy of reconciliation that prohibits discussion of the 1994 genocide and promotes using the national label of "Rwandan," rather than the ethnic categories of the past, civil unrest continues.


Slavery

Within American history, the forefathers believed that they were morally superior to Africans. Contemporary scholars, such as
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...
, describe this as
cultural imperialism Cultural imperialism (also cultural colonialism) comprises the culture, cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture (language, tradition, ritual, politics, economics) to creat ...
. Yet, at the time the forcible kidnapping of Africans from their homes was justified. It was culturally and institutionally sanctioned. Our legal system permitted this practice. European-Americans who enslaved Africans in United States history took away the basic human rights of African slaves in order to have them subject to their orders. Slaves were brutally beaten and treated inhumanely. Even when slavery was abolished, enactments such as the
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
kept African-Americans from certain basic rights and access to public space, because some European-Americans believed African-Americans were not worthy of equality to them.


Immigrants

Another example includes undocumented students, immigrants to the United States, and people who look like immigrants. Regarding undocumented students, this refers to children born in the United States to parents who had illegally entered the U.S. These students are actual U.S. citizens, but have been in danger of exportation or being denied the opportunity to go to school in the United States because they lack appropriate documentation. This is an issue in many states. Particular to Arizona, the state legislature passed a law, Arizona SB 1070, granting police officers the capability to stop anyone they suspect may be illegally in the U.S. and ask them to present their birth certificate. As explored by Mukherjee, Molina, and Adams in 2012, this legislation may be intended to contain illegal immigration, or it may be ethnic categorization as the basis for excluding rights to certain U.S. citizens who do not look like the dominant group. A similar type of moral exclusion is seen in the treatment of people in the city of New York. Individuals can be stopped, questioned, and frisked without cause because they "look suspicious" to police officers in the area. The police officers believe they have the authority to violate these peoples' rights in order to meet certain standards in their respective divisions.


Incarceration

In the United States every citizen is held to be entitled to basic rights (the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). Yet, the justice department has been granted the legitimate power to alter life quality of those in
prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where Prisoner, people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state ...
. A person in prison is stripped of their freedom, privacy, right to vote; even their
right to life The right to life is the belief that a human (or other animal) has the right to live and, in particular, should not be killed by another entity. The concept of a right to life arises in debates on issues including: capital punishment, with some ...
if placed under the death penalty. Society has deemed it justifiable to deny incarcerated persons many basic rights and privileges. Since the inmate uprising at
Attica Attica (, ''Attikḗ'' (Ancient Greek) or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area, which consists of the city of Athens, the capital city, capital of Greece and the core cit ...
in 1971, prison reform has improved conditions, making this 1971 quote from ''The Nation,'' seem implausible to have happened in America.


Capital punishment

Capital punishment is a controversial issue. Within the American justice system, the most heinous crimes such as treason, espionage, and murder can incur the death penalty. Those who commit perverse crimes are viewed as unworthy of owning a place within the bounds of the moral community. In this view, egregious criminal activity is paid for by forfeiting the right to live. Making such a judgement precedes and justifies our decision to execute humans. In America everybody believes that murder is wrong; humans should not kill each other, yet people are executed when they do things that place them in an extreme outgroup. Additionally, some believe that life imprisonment is inhumane.


Solutions and prevention

Opotow, Gerson, and Woodside explored moral exclusion theory in terms of teaching peace education and providing a structured and systematic approach to the complex issue of peace. They listed four key social dilemmas that moral exclusion systematically illustrates in the study of conflict, war, and peace: educating for coexistence, educating for human rights, educating for gender equality, and educating for environmentalism. According to them, pairing moral exclusion with these key areas provides a larger scope for and situates peace education as a grave topic warranting study and understanding by students of all ages. Furthermore, Opotow and coauthors asserted that moral exclusion should be seen as a human factor, a capacity of every person, rather than its limited scope as malicious actions of certain aberrant people. When such conceptualized, the value of mindfully considering habituated behaviors and adopting methods for change is illuminated. Citizens in the scope of the moral community have a responsibility to extend the circle of humanity and effect change through deliberately modifying norms. The aforementioned model of Ofreneo and de Vela explains how justness can be cultivated at each of the three levels of society. At the bottom is the social psychological. Within an individual psyche, individuals can recognize and treat all others with basic human dignity. In the middle of the model is the social cultural. Informal group level interaction, including undesirable labeling, marginalizing, or dehumanizing behavior can be redirected. At the top is the social scaffolding of governments, corporations, and institutions that have the power to redistribute more equitable ideas, thereby solidifying nonviolence as a cultural norm. Norms are social constructions of complex interaction and can be changed through social action, which must occur at each level described.
Dissent Dissent is an opinion, philosophy or sentiment of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or policy enforced under the authority of a government, political party or other entity or individual. A dissenting person may be referred to as ...
is a valuable tool for
social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformat ...
. Choosing not to speak against discriminatory, prejudicial, and marginalizing customs, normalizes and recreates them. Speaking out against inappropriate actions can change them; this can take many forms. For example, telling a friend when language or actions are objectionable because they contribute to the
marginalization Social exclusion or social marginalisation is the social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a term that has been used widely in Europe and was first used in France in the late 20th century. In the EU context, the Euro ...
of others is a simple action with potential larger consequence, although difficult to enact. Participating in more structured forms of dissent may be easier to participate in. Thirteen types of
activism Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from ...
described by Roland Watson in 2005 are detailed by @lissnup (Anita Hunt) on her blog, with links to Twitter. Traditional forms of activism include
marches In medieval Europe, a march or mark was, in broad terms, any kind of borderland, as opposed to a state's "heartland". More specifically, a march was a border between realms or a neutral buffer zone under joint control of two states in which diffe ...
,
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...
s, and
occupations Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment * Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, t ...
; such as, the recent
Occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a left-wing populist movement against economic inequality, capitalism, corporate greed, big finance, and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Financial ...
movement. Less traditional forms of activism are becoming more popular. Social media is increasingly used as a tool to propel activism. Music has always been a public forum with the ability to drastically alter culture and carry messages of dissent. Consequently, when moral exclusion is seen as a human capacity it logically follows that all humans also have the capacity to limit its consequences. As Opotow et al. suggested in 2005, Moral Exclusion Theory can be coupled with peace education to better understand conflict between groups that lead to extreme situations such as genocide, and also shift to educating about the importance of an inclusionary focus for groups and individuals.


References

{{reflist Moral psychology Social change Social inequality Injustice Discrimination