experiments such as Milgram’s work on obedience6 and Zimbardo’s prison study,7
which also testify to the fact that context can make most, if not all, individuals
behave in unspeakable ways. What is lacking in these perspectives, however, is a
clear definition of ‘‘context’’. Elsewhere we have argued that what is critical in
understanding how people make sense of atrocities committed by their fellow
countrymen is the level and type of identification with their in-group.8 In a series
of studies we investigated whether in-group responsibility for atrocities (such as
the killing of out-group members) moderates the use of moral disengagement
strategies to deal with the psychologically challenging situation.9 In the most
recent studies, we show that when it is the in-group, as opposed to another group,
that commits the atrocities (such as the torturing and killing of prisoners),
individuals dehumanize and devalue the victims more and show a lesser tendency
to provide reparations to the (out-group) victims and to punish the (in-group)
perpetrators. But this is usually more pronounced among individuals who hold a
glorified image of the in-group. For instance, in another study we gave
participants fictitious articles depicting torture carried out by soldiers of their
own army (vs. another army) and subsequently asked them to summarize the
events described in the article. We then analysed the language used in these
descriptions, and found that when the perpetrators are in-group members (as
opposed to out-group members), and when individuals have a high tendency to
glorify (as measured by the in-group glorification scale),10 there is less attribution
of responsibility, along with a tendency to minimize the events. In other words,
high glorifiers construct a different reality when the in-group is the perpetrator, as
compared with low glorifiers or with both of these groups of individuals when
confronted with an out-group perpetrator.11