Running head: VIOLENCE AND GROUP IDENTIFICATION Perpetrating Violence Increases ...

68 Pages·2016·0.44 MB·English

Running head: VIOLENCE AND GROUP IDENTIFICATION

Perpetrating Violence Increases Identification with Violent Groups:
Survey Evidence from Former Combatants

Rebecca Littman
Princeton University
November 21, 2016

Author Note
Thanks to Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Joel Cooper, Bethany Park, Stathis Kalyvas, members
of Elizabeth Levy Paluck’s lab, and participants in the CAPERS Conference and
Princeton’s Joint Degree Program in Social Policy for helpful comments. I also thank
Christopher Blattman and Jeannie Annan for providing full access to the datasets used in
the studies. Correspondence should be addressed to Rebecca Littman, Department of
Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540. E-mail: [email protected].
VIOLENCE AND GROUP IDENTIFICATION

Abstract
Heightened group identification motivates individuals to perpetrate violence, but
can perpetrating violence – in and of itself – increase identification with violent groups?
We test this idea using archival surveys of ex-combatants. In Liberia, where many
combatants joined their violent group willingly, the data show a positive association
between perpetrating violence and identification with one’s violent group (Study 1).
Study 2a replicates and extends this finding with data from ex-combatants in Uganda
who were abducted into their group, using a natural experiment in which some abductees
were forced to perpetrate violence against loved ones while others were not. Only
perpetrating violence, not exposure to violence more generally (Study 2b), and only
violent behaviors that involve a heightened sense of personal responsibility (Study 3) are
associated with increased group identification. These findings support a cycle of violence
in which perpetrating violence increases identification with violent groups and
heightened identification increases future violent behavior.
Keywords: violence, harm, intergroup conflict, group identification, survey

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Perpetrating Violence Increases Identification with Violent Groups:
Survey Evidence from Former Combatants
A top priority for social psychologists is to understand how individuals come to
participate in collective violence such as intergroup conflict and terrorism. Despite claims
that violence is declining over time (Pinker, 2011), countries across the world
experienced more than 16,800 terrorist attacks in the year 2014 alone, resulting in over
43,500 deaths and 40,900 injuries (Miller, 2015). Another 126,059 individuals were
killed in civil conflict in 2014, the highest number of fatalities recorded in a single year
since the Rwandan genocide in 1994 (Melander, 2015). Although it is tempting to think
that most perpetrators of collective violence are sadists or psychopaths who are motivated
by an internal desire to harm others for personal pleasure or instrumental gain (Taylor,
2009; Woodworth & Porter, 2002), this is often not the case (Waller, 2002). Research
shows that even suicide bombers acting on behalf of terrorist organizations generally do
not exhibit psychopathology. Instead they tend to come from educated, middle-class
backgrounds (Atran, 2003).
Social psychologists have long been interested in the questions of how and why
individuals engage in collective violence, overcoming their personal discomfort with
physically harming others (Grossman, 1996). Motivated in part by observations of
extreme intergroup conflict and genocide, such as the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide,
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, psychologists have established that heightened
identification with one’s ingroup can induce individuals to perpetrate violence on behalf
of their group. Under certain conditions, ingroup love can pave the way to outgroup hate,
making violence seem like a reasonable or even virtuous behavior (Fiske & Rai, 2014;
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Reicher, Haslam, & Rath, 2008; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Correlational studies and
research from the lab show that highly identified group members, particularly those
whose individual sense of self is fully integrated with that of their group, are more
supportive of and willing to engage in violent behavior on behalf of their ingroup
(Swann, Gomez, Huici, Morales, & Hixon, 2010; Swann, Jetten, Gomez, Whitehouse, &
Bastian, 2012). High identifiers may even come to associate subjective pleasure with
outgroup pain, making it possible to overcome their aversion to harming competitive
outgroup members (Cikara, 2015).
While this research demonstrates that identification with a group can motivate
ordinary people to perpetrate violence, in many cases in the real world, individuals do not
initially identify strongly with their violent group. Many violent groups are attractive for
social or economic reasons. Only after joining are individuals faced with the reality of
having to engage in violent behavior to stay in the group. For example, an individual
might join the military in order to gain transferrable skills or to receive help paying for
college in the future, rather than because of a particular ideology or pre-existing
allegiance (Kleykamp, 2006). Individuals may also be conscripted or even abducted into
violent groups, which are relatively common “recruitment” strategies employed by
militant and insurgent groups. Between 1980 and 2009, 45% of active insurgent groups
recruited through force: 32% through coercion and 13% through abduction (Cohen,
2013). Such “recruits” likely exhibit low levels of identification with their violent group
to begin with, and may even harbor negative attitudes or active resentment toward the
group. In all of these relatively common cases, the encouragement to perpetrate violence
on behalf of the group may come before the individual feels a sense of group
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identification.
In this paper, we examine whether the process of group identification leading to
engagement in violent behavior on behalf of that group also operates in the reverse
direction. That is, does perpetrating violence on behalf of a violent group increase
identification with the group? If perpetrating violence – in and of itself – increases group
identification, this has important implications for future violent behavior and may help to
explain cycles of intergroup conflict over time. Specifically, it suggests a cycle of
violence in which violent behavior increases identification with violent groups and group
identification increases future violent behavior. It also implies that individuals need not
start off as high group identifiers to eventually become loyal group members. Violence
itself may help to trigger this process, even among individuals who are resistant to
joining the group in the first place, or who join only for opportunistic reasons.
Research Hypothesis
In this paper, we propose the following hypothesis: perpetrating violence on
behalf of one’s group will increase identification with the violent group. To better
illustrate this hypothesis, imagine the extreme case of a young man living with his family
in a small village in Northern Uganda. As he sits outside of his hut one evening, his
village is attacked by members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group
terrorizing his region. A soldier forces a machete into the young man's hand, and instructs
him to aim the blade at his uncle. Either the young man swings the machete at his uncle,
or he will be harmed by the rebels holding him hostage. After the young man complies
with the soldier's request, he is taken away from his family and friends, now a new
member of the LRA. The act of killing his uncle with a machete could lead the young
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man to feel even more resentment toward the LRA for forcing him to carry out such a
heinous act. Alternatively, and perhaps surprisingly, engaging in such violent behavior
may have the opposite effect of making the young man feel more identified with the
LRA.
Existing Empirical Evidence
To date, there is very little empirical research that predicts how this young man is
most likely to react. One line of research we can look to examines the effect of
experiencing, as opposed to perpetrating, violence on attitudes towards one’s group. Two
classic studies in social psychology demonstrate that undergoing an unpleasant or violent
group initiation – personally experiencing harm in order to join a group – increases the
attractiveness of a new group (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Gerard & Mathewson, 1966). In
these studies, participants listened to a group discussion in the lab but did not interact
with other group members. Similarly, recent experimental work in the lab suggests that
collectively undergoing a painful task in a group setting (small groups of 2-6 university
students) increases self-reported level of identification with the group (Bastian, Jetten, &
Ferris, 2014). However, the only study that investigates this effect using groups outside
of the lab (Dutch sororities) found that undergoing a more severe initiation actually
decreased the attractiveness of the group (Lodewijkx & Syroit, 1997). Additionally, it is
important to note that since all of these studies involved experiencing, as opposed to
perpetrating, violence, it is unclear whether the same psychology applies.
The one previous paper to examine the association between aggression and group
identification finds that engaging in aggressive acts against one’s former ingroup is the
strongest predictor of commitment to one’s new group (Toosi, Masicampo, & Ambady,
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2014). While this finding is an important first step, the paper looks at players who switch
teams in professional basketball and in a live-action tag game. Therefore the aggression
outcomes are not physical violence of the kind we see in situations of conflict. The
researchers suggest that their findings could extend to more extreme scenarios, such as
when civilians become armed insurgents and even to the horrific situation in which child
soldiers are forced to kill a family member. This is what we aim to test in this paper,
using archival data from ex-combatants who fought for violent groups in Liberia and
Uganda and engaged in extreme forms of physical violence, including forced violence
against family members.
Theorizing the Path from Violence to Group Identification
Now let us return to the case of the young man in Northern Uganda who is
abducted into the LRA and forced to perpetrate violence against his uncle. Why do we
hypothesize that engaging in this violent behavior would increase his identification with
the violent group? While there are many possible mechanisms that likely work in tandem,
we will focus on two mechanisms stemming from the aversive and counternormative
nature of violence: (1) individuals increase their group identification in order to justify
the distress (negative physiological arousal) they feel after perpetrating violence, and (2)
individuals fear rejection from meaningful others outside of the violent group, and
therefore increase their identification with the group that supports and rewards their
violent behavior.
The Aversive Nature of Violent Behavior
Research from moral and clinical psychology shows that individuals generally
exhibit an aversion to harming others and will avoid causing harm even at personal cost
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(Crockett, Kurth-Nelson, Siegel, Dayan, & Dolan, 2014; Grossman, 1996). Previous
research finds that when individuals – particularly those who are inexperienced with
violent behavior – do harm others, they tend to experience high levels of psychological
and physiological distress (Maguen et al., 2010; Miller & Cushman, 2013; Miller,
Hannikainen, & Cushman, 2014). This was first demonstrated in the field of social
psychology by Milgram's (1965) electric shock experiments. Although a number of
participants complied with the experimenter's request to shock another individual until he
was presumably gravely injured or dead, Milgram describes the tension that many
participants exhibited as they carried out the task.
More recent lab studies reveal that individuals experience distressing
physiological reactions when they make moral decisions about harming others or
simulate violent actions (Cushman, Gaffey, Gray, & Berry Mendes, 2012; Navarrete et
al., 2012). In terms of psychological distress, the act of killing another human being in
combat has been linked to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and
depression, even when controlling for other war experiences and exposure to violence
(MacNair, 2002; Maguen et al., 2010).
What are the consequences of engaging in aversive behaviors? According to the
theory of cognitive dissonance, when individuals feel distress after engaging in a
behavior that violates personal beliefs or normative standards, they are motivated to
reduce this distress in order to restore a positive view of the self (Festinger, 1957; Stone
& Cooper, 2001). Capitalizing on the aversive nature of violent behavior, early research
used interpersonal harm as a precipitating event through which to study dissonance (e.g.,
Brock & Buss, 1962; Glass, 1964; Lerner & Matthews, 1967). Researchers explored how
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harming others under classic conditions of dissonance-arousal could lead perpetrators to
trivialize the suffering of their victim (Brock & Buss, 1962) or act less friendly toward
their victim (Glass, 1964). In an intergroup context, derogating the target of one’s violent
behavior may extend to derogating the entire outgroup as a way of reducing dissonance
(Cooper & Mackie, 1983; Glasford, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2009).
In addition to derogating one’s victim or trivializing their suffering, we
hypothesize that individuals may reduce distress after engaging in violent behavior by
increasing their identification with the violent group. This is consistent with Festinger’s
(1957) original observation that social groups can be vehicles for reducing cognitive
dissonance. When individuals perpetrate violence on behalf of a group, they generally
receive support and encouragement for their behavior from the other members of their
violent group. The experience of receiving positive feedback from their group for the
aversive violent behavior may help to provide a justification for their actions, thus
reducing their distress and in turn increasing identification with the violent group. For
example, individuals may tell themselves that they must really love their group if they
were willing to harm someone on behalf of the group. They may also simply feel more
positive about the group after receiving support for their aversive behavior from other
group members. In short, individuals may heighten their identification with the violent
group to help reduce their discomfort after perpetrating violence.
The Counternormative Nature of Violent Behavior
In most societies, people are socialized from a young age with the norm of “do no
harm.” Even in violent contexts, at least some of an individual’s family and community
members likely still believe that harming others is not acceptable behavior, and therefore
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do not endorse the individual’s engagement in violent behavior. In this case, we theorize
that engaging in violent behavior on behalf of a group might increase identification with
the violent group through its negative consequences on the individual’s other group
memberships. For example, a young man abducted by the LRA in Uganda may feel like
his family now sees him as a rebel, and does not approve of his violent behavior. In fact
many young people in Uganda abducted by the LRA felt that they “couldn’t go home”
(Otim, 2009). If an individual perceives a lack of social support for their violent behavior
from meaningful others outside of the violent group, this can lead to disidentification
with other social identities (Becker, Tausch, Spears, and Christ, 2011; Glasford, Pratto, &
Dovidio, 2008; McKimmie et al., 2003). In the case of violent groups, this might lead
individuals to disidentify from others who are perceived to be less supportive of violent
behavior, such as the individual’s family and community members back home.
Not only is this perceived lack of support for violent behavior expected to lead to
disidentification with other social groups, it is also expected to lead to increased
identification with the violent group. When individuals feel that others are rejecting them,
this heightens the activation of group constructs and social identities, and leads
individuals to judge their own group as more meaningful and cohesive than other groups
(Knowles & Gardner, 2008). Having fewer other social identities also leads individuals to
identify more strongly with their existing ingroup (Grant & Hogg, 2012). On a practical
level, some violent groups may make it difficult for individuals to leave the group,
threatening to harm the individual or their loved ones if they try to escape. In this case,
the individual may have no other identities available to them apart from the violent
group, causing them to cling to their one available social identity.
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