The Ash Twins Blog

Jost et al (unpublished) present astonishing survey evidence of the effects of cognitive dissonance on establishmentarian sentiments:

According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, and justifiable (Jost & Banaji, 1994). The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support, defend, and justify existing social systems, authorities, and outcomes. Variations on this hypothesis were tested in four U.S. national survey studies. We found that: (a) low income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to support limitations on the rights of citizens and media representatives to criticize the government (b) low income Latinos were more likely to trust in U.S. government officials and to believe that “the government is run for the benefit of all” than were high income Latinos, (c) Southerners in the U.S. were more likely to endorse meritocratic belief systems than were Northerners and poor and Southern African Americans were more likely to subscribe to meritocratic ideologies than were African Americans who were more affluent and from the North, (d) low income respondents and African Americans were more likely than others to believe that economic inequality is legitimate and necessary, and (e) stronger endorsement of meritocratic ideology was associated with greater satisfaction with one’s own economic situation. Taken together, these findings provide support for the dissonance-based argument that people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.

This excerpt is taken from the abstract. The remainder of the paper is available here:

http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/rp1671.pdf

From Osofsky, Bandura, and Zimbardo (2005):

At the societal level, public support for the death penalty has remained at a high and stable level, but there has been a recent decline in sanction of state executions. In a discerning analysis, Gross and Ellsworth (2003) identify a number of factors that have weakened public support for the death penalty. The conflicted view of the American public regarding state executions is shown in voicing substantial support for the death penalty while doubting its deterrent value, and acknowledging that the judicial system is often administered unfairly and cannot fully protect innocent defendants from being put to death.

Enlistment of the mechanisms of moral disengagement eases the public’s moral dilemma over state executions. Indeed, findings of a national study (McAlister, Bandura, & Owen, 2004b) show that the higher the moral disengagement, the stronger the support for capital punishment even when respondents are given the alternative of life imprisonment without parole and for executing mentally retarded defendants. Level of moral disengagement varies as a function of a number of sociodemographic characteristics. Higher levels of moral disengagement are exhibited
by males, those of lower education, and older individuals. Caucasians exhibit greater levels of moral disengagement regarding the execution of criminals than do either African-Americans or Hispanics. Variation in support of executions closely mirrors the level of moral disengagement by members in each of these categories.

Moral qualms are eased when execution is viewed in the abstract under the sanitized label of “capital punishment.” People favor the death penalty in the abstract but are more hesitant to impose it when given information that personalizes the murderer (Ellsworth, 1978). In explaining the variation, Ellsworth suggests that when people have minimal information about a convicted felon, they conjure up a prototype of the most heinous murderer. They are also less supportive of the death penalty if they have to serve as jurors (Ellsworth & Ross, 1983). Obviously those who voice support for the death penalty are far removed from its implementation in the execution chamber. It is a graver moral predicament for jurors who make decisions that sentence a person to death, and still more so for executioners who society has assigned the task of taking a person’s life.

In his in-depth analysis of jurors’ moral disengagement, Haney (1997) identified the unique conditions built into the sentencing process that enable jurors to sentence a person to death. Individuals who unalterably oppose the death penalty are eliminated when the jury is impaneled. Attorneys battle over the personalization and dehumanization of defendants. Diffusion and displacement of responsibility also figure prominently in the sentencing process. Jurors view their decisions as a sentencing imperative rather than as a personal decision, aided by prosecutors who often present them with misleading and forced choices on capital sentencing (Bowers and Steiner, 1999). Jurors not only minimize their personal responsibility for their collective decision but play down its consequences as well. They contend that Appellate judges will ultimately decide the question and, even if the death sentence is upheld, the execution is unlikely to happen.

This excerpt is from Osofsky et al’s background section, as part of a paper in which they study the moral engagement of executioners. You can read the whole paper here:

http://baw2008.altervista.org/DOCUMENTS/articoli%20baw%202008/Zimbardo%202005.pdf