Violent Extremism and Moral Disengagement: A Study of Colombian Armed Groups

Abstract

Violent extremism is commonly conditioned by a variety of psychological processes and mechanisms that when activated or deactivated aid implication in extreme behavior, including destructive actions with a large dose of cruelty against people and groups. One of those processes is moral disengagement, which was originally postulated by Bandura. To test this relationship, the present research focused on studying these mechanisms in members of Colombian illegal armed groups. Total sample size was 18 (14 males and four females) demobilized members of the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia [AUC]) and guerrilla organizations (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC], National Liberation Army [ELN], among others), which had participated directly or indirectly in violent actions against people and groups, which included murders, tortures, and massacres. Qualitative methodology was used, specifically in-depth interviews and content analysis. This analysis led to the verification in the narratives of the participants of the use of all the mechanisms of moral disengagement described by Bandura aiming to justify their behavior within the armed group. The most noteworthy mechanisms were those that minimized participation (especially, attributing behavior to obeying orders: displacement of responsibility) and moral justification, especially, the context of confrontation. Moral disengagement processes are found in armed group members (such as insurgency, terrorist organizations, or militias). These mechanisms cancel ordinary psychological reactions of rejection, fear, and moral controls that oppose the carrying out of cruelty and extreme violence.

The moral disengagement scale-24: Factorial structure and cross-cultural comparison in Spanish and Colombian adolescents.

“…Furthermore, cross-cultural comparison has not previously explored with this region. Here this study aims to rectify this, and has included Colombia specifically, as it had one of the longest unresolved conflicts in the world and a history steeped in violence (Blanco et al, 2020). This means Colombian adolescents have a higher potential exposure to community violence (Chaux, 2002).…”

Rape Culture, Revictimization, and Social Representations: Images and Discourses on Sexual and Violent Crimes in the Digital Sphere in Mexico

“…crimes against women that have been analyzed were the following: femicide, rape, enforced disappearance (also known as forced disappearance, see Blanco et al, 2020), sexual abuse, and sexual harassment. We decided to analyze the 2018 year for two reasons.…”

Give me your password! What are you hiding? Associated factors of intimate partner violence through technological abuse

“…Though moral disengagement has been rarely explored in specific domestic violence contexts, many findings point out the significant link between moral disengagement mechanisms and generally aggressive behavior (which, implicitly, might also appear in intimate relationships). For example, researchers suggested significant links between moral disengagement mechanisms and bullying and cyberbullying perpetration (Runions & Bak, 2015;Teng et al, 2020), unethical relational behavior such as the likelihood of making false allegations or retaliating against one's partner (Clemente et al, 2019), dating violence and victimization (Cuadrado-Gordillo et al, 2020), deviant peer affiliation (Wang et al, 2020), violent extremism (Blanco et al, 2020), sexist attitudes (Sánchez-Jiménez & Muñoz-Fernández, 2021), andgenerallyantisocial behavior (Risser & Eckert, 2016;Sijtsema et al, 2019).…”