Responses to killing in state-sanctioned and unsanctioned killers: pathways of construing

Abstract

Examples of responses to killing are provided from three groups of state-sanctioned killers: executioners, perpetrators of genocide, and members of the armed forces; as well as violent offenders. The extent to which such individuals experience guilt and shame is related, from a personal construct theory perspective, to the degree to which their actions are consistent with their core roles as construed by themselves and others. Drawing upon examples from situations of warfare, it is argued that one mechanism for the avoidance of guilt and shame may be hostile extortion of evidence that the individual’s actions are ultimately the responsibility of another, and that cycles of hostility may foment and perpetuate the conflicts concerned. Other such mechanisms that are discussed are reduction of permeability of moral constructs, depersonalization of killing, and dehumanization of victims. By contrast, guilt and shame are likely to be more fully experienced, and possibly to lead to reconstruction, when the individual’s encounter with their victim is one that engenders both commonality and sociality.