The special issue of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology on collective harmdoing aims to explore, from the perspective of the perpetrator, the association between harmdoing and well-being, and the processes through which people engage and disengage from harmdoing.
The issue presents 6 articles that represent a diversity of perspectives on manifestations of collective harmdoing: from youth violence to genocide; from soldiers in combat to terrorism and counterterrorism; and a discussant piece that considers the themes, achievements, and omissions of the special issue.
Three of the papers lay out theoretical frameworks that integrate social, clinical, and peace psychology approaches.
- Building on her established work, MacNair (2015) examines the consequences and treatment of Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress Disorder, when the trauma that causes patients' symptoms comes from moral injury, or the perpetration of harmful acts.
- Neville and colleagues (2015) also examine the association between harmdoing and lower wellbeing, focusing on youth violence as a public health challenge that should be addressed by developing primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions.
- In contrast, Leidner, Li, and Kardos (2015) develop the provocative concept of "healthy wars" and explore the positive as well as negative associations between collective harmdoing and wellbeing, with positive associations proposed when the harmdoing is constructed as legitimate and beneficial for one's group.
In turn, three of the papers examine empirical data.
- Kraft (2015) picks up on the theme of Leidner and colleagues, showing that perpetrators maintained and derived benefit from their harmdoing by developing narratives that vindicated the violence.
- King and Sakamoto (2015) analyze interviews recorded as part of a program promoting individual and group healing between the Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda (the Healing of Life Wounds program) and explore the mechanisms of reconciliation as well as the ongoing tensions of the dialogue.
- Finally, Hijazi, Keith, and O'Brien (2015) examine post-traumatic growth after witnessing and participating in war violence, in a clinical sample of American combat Veterans. A majority of the sample endorsed at least a moderate degree of post-traumatic growth on at least one dimension, with increased appreciation of life being the most frequently endorsed change.
The editors are excited by the special issue's achievements in bringing together a range of theoretical perspectives and international data, in comparing contexts from gangs and youth violence to genocide to military combat, and directly addressing the well-being impacts of collective harmdoing.
These synergies are explored by Ben Hagai and Crosby (2015) in a penetrating analysis that also highlights many of the unanswered questions of the special issue. In particular, the theoretical analyses put forward important contextual moderators which the empirical analyses are only beginning to consider.
Citation:
Louis, W. R., Amiot, C. E., & Thomas, E. F. (2015). Collective harmdoing: Developing the perspective of the perpetrator. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(3), 306-312. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000112
Note: This article is in the Social Psychology & Social Processes topic area. View more articles in the Social Psychology & Social Processes topic area.