Mind denial of Palestinian civilians, but not Hamas terrorists, predicts support for violence.

What is it about?

A classic view of genocidal violence is that it occurs when perpetrators no longer see their victims as human and their sense of morality turns off. However, recent work suggests that much violence occurs when perpetrators' sense of morality turns on and they feel an active desire to harm enemies who they perceive as fully human. In this paper, I show both processes at play in the context of Israeli drone strikes in Gaza. I find that dehumanization of Palestinian civilians (killed as collateral damage) predicts support for drone strikes, but dehumanization of Hamas militants (actual targets of the strikes) does not predict support. These findings suggest that support for genocidal violence may be driven more by the humanity perpetrators ascribe to civilians rather than enemies, and that greater attention should be paid to the moral motives that drive perpetrators to kill enemies they recognize as fully human.

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Photo by Janne Leimola on Unsplash

Photo by Janne Leimola on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Theoretically, the research adds to work suggesting that genocidal violence should not be thought of simply as a passive act of failing to perceive innocent victims' humanity in ways that allow violence to occur, but also as an active process of harming enemies who we think deserve to suffer. Practically, a popular approach to stopping genocide is to humanize victims. But if dehumanization only predicts violence against perfect, innocent victims, and not those perceived as enemies, then efforts to humanize victims may have limited success, and may simply lead to perpetrators perceiving civilians as enemies to justify harming them.

Perspectives

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We are living in a time of ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Its crucial that we investigate the causes of this violence, both so that there's a record of it, and so that we can end the violence.

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