Cognitive and neural bases of decision-making causing civilian casualties during intergroup conflict

Abstract

Civilian casualties occur during military attacks. Such “collateral damage” is prohibited by international laws but increases with substantial consequences when intergroup conflict escalates. Here, we investigate cognitive and neural bases of decision-making processes resulting in civilian harm, using a task that simulates punishment decision-making during intergroup conflict. We test two groups of Chinese participants in a laboratory setting, and two ethnic groups (Jewish and Palestinian) in Israel. The results dissociate two psychological constructs, harm preference and harm avoidance, which respectively characterize punishment decision-making related to outgroup combatants and outgroup noncombatants during intergroup conflict. In particular, individuals show decreased avoidance of harming outgroup noncombatants when conflict escalates. Brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) reveals that decreased harm avoidance is predicted by inhibition of the left middle frontal activity during selection of punishment decisions. Our findings provide insight into the cognitive and neural bases of decision-making involving civilian harm during intergroup conflict.

The affective harm account (AHA) of moral judgment: Reconciling cognition and affect, dyadic morality and disgust, harm and purity.

“…Whether people perceive harm cannot be independently determined by an external authority (e.g., an experimenter) based on the “objective” presence of physical injury or emotional trauma within a situation (Graham et al, 2013). Instead, harm is something perceived and appraised by each of us within our minds, based on how much intention (Cushman, 2008, 2015; Decety & Cacioppo, 2012; Hesse et al, 2016; Malle & Guglielmo, 2011), causation (Le Guen et al, 2015; Moore et al, 2013; Schlottmann et al, 2002), and suffering (Decety & Cowell, 2018; Fan et al, 2011; Han et al, 2020; Lamm et al, 2011) we infer. People can therefore still perceive some amount of harm even when an act is ostensibly—or explicitly argued to be—harmless, as in the case of incest between Mark and Julie (Royzman et al, 2015).…”