Identity fusion and inter-group relations

人类共享传统的行为准则，包括不赞成严重伤害他人。因此，对社会来说，一个令人不安的挑战是理解群体成员如何能够违反人类最基本的道德原则谋杀或伤害局外人。 这个项目将借鉴过去的证据，即那些与他们的群体强烈“融合”的人特别倾向于将其他群体成员视为家人。这些家庭关系，反过来，使他们牺牲自己的群体。当强烈融合的人与另一个群体发生冲突时，他们会经历一种情绪化的状态。这种状态迫使他们强烈地感觉到，他们的第一个，往往也是唯一的道德考虑是他们的家庭责任，以牺牲外人的利益来保护群体成员。这导致了“群体间道德近视”，在这种状态下，人们放弃了传统的道德行为标准，转而支持一个简单的规则：代表自己的群体行事，而不考虑对局外人的后果。这个研究项目探讨了导致群体间道德近视的机制，并确定了什么放大了其影响，什么反过来又可能避免其负面后果。最终，通过了解这些过程，社会可以学习如何防止团体成员的各种暴力行为，如针对平民的自杀式恐怖主义，屠杀援助工作者和人口贩运。一系列的实地和实验室研究将阐明导致群体间道德近视状态的有意识和无意识机制。实证研究将在几个具有长期群体间冲突历史的地区进行，包括中东，西班牙和美国。这项研究将探索导致融合的人去非人化外群体成员的过程，在判断自己群体成员的道德时做出例外，认可他们群体的道德准则优于所有其他人，并采取一些不可想象的歧视性行动。研究将检验这一假设，即对内部群体的威胁的感知将放大这些影响。最后一波研究测试了避免群体间道德近视负面后果的策略。这项研究的国际组成部分有助于促进美国研究人员之间的持续合作，西班牙、英国和中东。此外，通过关注美国的群体间冲突以及欧亚大陆和非洲的热点地区，包括以色列/巴勒斯坦，利比亚和西班牙，这项研究对美国具有重要意义。国际科学与工程办公室（OISE）的共同资助为该奖项提供了支持。

Humans share conventional codes of conduct that include disapproval of severely harming others. Thus a disquieting challenge for society is understanding how members of groups can murder or harm outsiders in violation of some of humanity's most basic moral principles. This project will draw on past evidence that people who are strongly "fused" with their group are especially inclined to view fellow group members as family. These family ties, in turn, cause them to sacrifice themselves for the group. When strongly fused persons come into conflict with another group, they experience an emotionally charged state. This state compels them to feel intensely that their first, and often only, moral consideration is their familial duty to protect group members at the expense of outsiders. This leads to "intergroup moral myopia," a state in which people abandon conventional standards of moral conduct in favor of a simple rule: Act on behalf of one's group regardless of the consequences for outsiders. This research project examines the mechanisms that give rise to intergroup moral myopia, and determines what amplifies its effects and what might in turn avert its negative consequences. Ultimately, by understanding such processes, society may learn how to prevent a variety of violent acts by group members such as suicide terrorism against civilians, the slaughter of aid workers, and human sex trafficking. A series of field and laboratory studies will illuminate the conscious and non-conscious mechanisms that give rise to the state of intergroup moral myopia. The empirical research will be conducted in several regions with long histories of intergroup conflict, including the Middle East, Spain, and U.S. This research will explore the processes that lead fused persons to dehumanize outgroup members, make exceptions when judging the morality of their own group members, endorse the superiority of their group's moral code over all others, and engage in discriminatory actions that would otherwise be unthinkable. Studies will test the hypothesis that perception of threat to the ingroup will amplify these effects. The final wave of studies test strategies for averting the negative consequences of intergroup moral myopia. The international component of this research helps foster ongoing collaborations between researchers in the U.S., Spain, UK, and Mideast. Moreover, by focusing on intergroup conflict in the U.S. and hotspots across Eurasia and Africa, including Israel/Palestine, Libya, and Spain, this research has important implications for the U.S.'s national security, economic well-being, and conflict resolution.Co-funding from the Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) provided support for this award.