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Moral exclusion
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Moral exclusion
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.
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 and moral exclusion.[citation needed]
Susan Sutherland Isaacs, 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. 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.
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."
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.
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Moral exclusion
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.
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 and moral exclusion.[citation needed]
Susan Sutherland Isaacs, 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. 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.
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."
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.