Justification, An Overview

J Justification, Overview Abram Trosky1, Kathleen Malley-Morrison2 and Candace Cantrell2 1 Department of Political Science, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA 2 Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA Introduction Nowhere has the critical impulse “overshot its target” as widely as in relation to the concept and activity of justification (Latour, 2002). The truth of this proposition in psychology is evidenced in the ambiguity of language and concepts dealing with the truth of propositions generally: Reasons are not always reasonable, but often “rationalizations”; moral justification might as easily be called “moralizing”; and what is “just” can always be countered as just one’s opinion. A great deal of psychological theory and research focuses on the construction and deconstruction of justifications, with much of this work documenting the ways in which justifications can be self-serving (Gino & Ariely, 2012; Wolff & Moser, 2008), group serving (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001), or system serving (Day, Kay, Holmes, & Napier, 2011; Jost & Banaji, 1994; Shepherd & Kay, 2012). The emancipatory potential of critical psychology’s contribution lies not only in critique of ego-justification and social dominance, but in championing the more empathic principles that ground authentic justification and the values of pluralism and inclusivity. Definition The North American Oxford Dictionary gives as its primary definitions of justification: “The action of showing something to be right or reasonable” and giving “good reason for something that exists or has been done.” Its primary definition of just as “based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair” adds two more equally debatable criteria. The dictionary itself is an example of a legitimacy framework that makes justification possible: Its authority comes not through formal consent but mirrors actual practice, aggregating past and present meanings in a constellation of mutual intelligibility. Grounding meaning has been a challenge in psychology, which has oscillated between positivism and behaviorism’s will to objectivity, and the radical subjectivity of social constructivism (Holzkamp, 1992; Tolman & Maiers, 1991). Psychologists of all stripes have been successful in demonstrating the facility humans have for deceiving themselves and others as to what is right, good, fair, or moral. Stanley Milgram’s landmark “Behavioral Study of Obedience” and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment showed how the act of justifying commonly T. Teo (ed.), Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 J 1028 accompanies deviant, violent, or sociopathic behaviors, especially when coupled with a perceived higher good (scientific progress) or dangerous threat (social disorder). Building on this work, social cognitive psychologist Albert Bandura finds individuals justify their actions and motives not only to others for the sake of social acceptance but also to themselves to avoid self-censure. Bandura uses the term “moral justification” to describe the sociocognitive mechanism through which “detrimental conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worthy or moral purposes” (Bandura, Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, & Regalia, 2001, p. 126). In conjunction with other mechanisms such as dehumanization or blaming the victim, “moral” justification not only validates but accelerates harmful behavior (Bandura, 1999). To avoid confusion, Trosky and Malley-Morrison (e.g., 2011) prefer the term “pseudo-moral justification” to describe this reframing of immoral behavior as moral. In critical psychology, “justification” is often used to signify a pseudo-moral justification, meaning “reasons given” rather than proof that some behavior is right. For example, Teo (1999, pp. 132–133) describes racism as a “pseudo-scientific” construct developed within the context of European colonization “to justify, within a systematic ideology, inhuman practices.” Keywords Justification; just; justify; moral; principle; self-justification; system justification; excuse; rationalization; reason; Albert Bandura; Teo; pseudo-moral justification Justification, Overview and excuses to an effort to simply be “let off the hook.” Other researchers (e.g., Reynolds, Leavitt, & DeCelles, 2010) retain behaviorist agnosticism regarding internal states in referring to “justifications” and “excuses” interchangeably. Holland, Meertens, and van Vugt (2002) agree with Bandura that when people’s behavior is at odds with their image of themselves as good, fair, or ethical human beings, they may rely on internal self-justifications, which involve actual changes in cognition (including denial and trivialization of negative outcomes) or external self-justifications (which involve “excuses” diminishing personal responsibility for those outcomes). Still others frame the difference between excuses and justifications as having to do principally with human agency, freedom, and responsibility. In a qualitative analysis of narratives from men incarcerated for domestic violence, Henderson and Hewstone (1984) asserted that an excuse “accepts that the act was wrong but denies responsibility,” whereas a justification “denies that the act was wrong. . .[and] appeals to some norm of proper conduct such as selfdefense . . .” (p. 789). Blumoff (2009), citing work in moral philosophy and jurisprudence, holds that justifications are socially approved, whereas excuses are not. This approach, using societal consensus as the basis of legitimacy, falls short of critical psychology’s advocacy of historical/political agency and awareness of the mechanisms of progressive social change: What happens when a morally legitimate justification is rejected as unlawful by an unjust society? The civil rights legislation passed under the Warren Court, or more recently to promote marriage equality, are examples of a minority that is ahead of public opinion on “social acceptability” having to appeal to justifications beyond those of majoritarian democracy. Traditional Debates The central debate over justification focuses on its differentiability from excuse. Much of the psychological literature, both traditional and critical, links justifications to higher-order principles Critical Debates Underlying the traditional debate as to whether and how justifications should be distinguished Justification, Overview from excuses is the critical issue of what criteria constitute a legitimately moral justification. The equivocations and ambiguities saddling “justification” are related to long running and possibly irresolvable debates regarding free will vs. determinism, nature vs. nurture, and conscious vs. unconscious forces. Humans’ imperfect knowledge of the world, capacity for self-deception, and the increasingly recognized role of the nonrational mind in moral judgment (Haidt, 2012) make it difficult to formalize such criteria. Though the difficult relationship between intention, consequence, and blame has plagued both moral philosophy and moral psychology (Scanlon, 2008), there has been little interdisciplinary collaboration on these problems. Chalquist (2001), a critical psychologist frustrated with the failure of traditional psychologists to deal more directly with real world problems, uses the terms “excuse” and “justification” this way: “For some of us . . . remaining office-bound can also be a handy – and, frankly, grandiose – excuse for withdrawing our energies from a world filled with confusion and injustice. . . .[A]s we fail to address the woes in the streets, what’s justified as confidential or as adherence to good boundaries (and certainly is in some cases) looks more and more in its postures of distancing and withdrawal. . . (emphasis added)” (para. 4). Although “justified” is used here pejoratively, the implication is that psychologists are justified in breaking professional taboo of objectivity by engaging in ethical-political praxis (Fox et al., 2009). Similarly, although Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement (e.g., 1999) adds valuable perspective on spurious justifications, the very idea that there is a common morality to be disengaged from implies the existence of authentic moral principles (or “humane standards,” as he puts it) and moral judgment, the appeal to which would constitute authentic justification. The cognitive mechanisms facilitating recognition and resonance of these principles – and thereby differentiating real from spurious appeals – are less well integrated into social psychological peace research (SPPR) (Cohrs, 2003) and critical 1029 J theory. The frequent assumption in these subfields, as well as in postmodern, postcolonial, and Marxist elements of critical psychology, is that “justice,” “morality,” and “fairness” are culturally conditioned products of socialization and that socially approved justifications reproduce power relations (Burke, 2005; Clark, 2010; Curtis, 2009; MacIntyre, 1989). “Justification,” in this model, is merely an echo of socialization. The prominence of transcultural “legitimacy frameworks” in “world society” (Clark, 2007), however, indicates that “social construction” need not be antonymous with authenticity nor limited to group norms or parochial legal systems (Etzioni, 2010; Latour, 2003; Malley-Morrison & Trosky, 2011). A timely issue confronting SPPR and political psychologists interested in public opinion is which justifications to accept as legitimate in arbitrating the use of force in international conflict. In the evolution of organized warfare, nations have agreed upon principles restricting entry into (jus ad bellum) and conduct (jus in bello) of war, which have been formalized into the “war convention” (Walzer, 2006) and have informed the development of international humanitarian law (Orend, 2002). Explicit just war appeals by nations that have violated both jus ad bellum and jus in bello norms have fostered deep moral skepticism among many social scientists regarding any justification for the use of force (e.g., Christie, Tint, Wagner, & Winter, 2008; Doyle, 2011; Lakoff, 1991; Smith, 2008). Proponents counter that misrepresentation of the just war framework does not undermine its legitimacy nor the human rights rationales represented in the United Nation’s Responsibility to Protect. The hypocritical national and military leaders who abuse these principles are held to account in the court of public opinion, the international community, and, increasingly, by the International Criminal Court (Arsanjani, 1999; Weiss, 2010). For the same reason, psychological research into how and why justifications are used to subvert just, moral, and fair behavior by individuals and groups ought not be allowed to compromise the J J 1030 criteria of authentic justification. To this end, critical psychologists, social cognitivists, and SPPR all have a valuable role to play in reconstructing moral judgment – connecting insights on the biological evolution on and adaptation of that faculty to prescriptive work on its continued development in a globalized political environment. References Arsanjani, M. H. (1999). The Rome statute of the international criminal court. The American Journal of International Law, 93(1), 22–43. Bandura, A. (1999). 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