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

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.

Para una psicología social crítica no construccionista: reflexiones a partir del realismo crítico de Ignacio Martín-Baró / For a Critic Social Psychology Non-Constructionist: Reflexions from the Critic Realism of Ignacio Martín-Baró

Resumen La naturaleza sociohistóricamente construida y compartida del conocimiento y de la subjetividad que el construccionismo social parece haberse arrogado en propiedad, forma parte de la historia de la ciencia social. Por otra parte, la crítica al modelo causal-mecanicista como única fuente de conocimiento, que el movimiento construccionista considera una de sus principales aportaciones epistemológicas, se remonta nada menos que a Kant. La verdadera aportación del construccionismo social ha consistido en suprimir la experiencia como fuente del conocimiento y de la subjetividad, negar la existencia de una realidad externa al sujeto, mantenerse ontológicamente mudo frente a ella y desconfiar de la posibilidad de cambiarla. Parece evidente que sobre estos cimientos no es posible, tal y como se ha pretendido, construir una psicología social crítica. Frente a ella, y en sus antípodas, el realismo crítico de Martín-Baró parte de la existencia de una realidad objetiva cuyas injusticias y miserias denunció de manera insistente, se vale de métodos cuantitativos para analizarla; la estructura social es su marco de referencia preferido a la hora de estudiar las diversas modalidades y manifestaciones del comportamiento humano, no renuncia a la existencia de verdades parciales y sociohistóricamente situadas y define como objetivo de su quehacer teórico, el cambio social.

The sociohistorically built and created nature of knowledge and subjectivity that social constructionism seems to have arrogated is part of the history of social Science. Moreover, criticism to the casual mechanistic model as the only source of knowledge #that the constructionist movement considers as one of its main epistemological contributions# goes back to none other than Kant. The real contribu tion of social constructionism has consisted in deleting experience as a resource for knowledge and subjectivity, denying the existence of an extemal reality to the subject, keeping ontologically quiet towards it, and distrusting the possibility of changing it. It seems evident that building a critical social psychology upon these foundations is not possible. Opposing this, Martin-Baró's critical realism is based on the existence of an objective reality of which injustices and wretchedness he insistently denounced. This critical realism malees use of quantitative methods to analyze this objective reality, it holds social structure as its preferred framework when studying the different modalities and manifestations of human behavior, it does not deny the existent of partial and sociohistorically situated truths, and it identifies social change as the objective of its theoretical work.

[Seven psychosocial principles to explain terrorism]. / Siete principios psicosociales para explicar el terrorismo.

Research approaches leading to the understanding of the terrorist phenomenon are suggested. Seven principles explaining terrorism are analysed from a psychosocial approach: They could complete the explanations of terrorism focused in socio-structural and psychological variables, the latter being insufficient and often erroneous. Thus, terrorism is presented as a strategy of political influence, and the psychological attributes of terrorists are explained as the result of several influential social processes. We considered that terrorist attacks and campaigns correspond to strategic reasons, but we also assume that the rationality of the terrorists perspective is limited. As far as the organisational parameters are concerned, we propose an analogy with ordinary social movements, especially relating to their ideological frameworks of legitimisation and resource mobilization processes.