Bias in the Evaluation of Violence Against Civilians: Cognitive Dissonance and Moral Disengagement in Colombia

How do individuals' relative preferences for one side of the conflict over the other shape their evaluations of violence against civilians? An online survey experiment in Colombia suggests that people justify lenient punishments for their preferred side by characterizing their side’s violence as less harmful and less likely to be the responsibility of group leadership.

Speaker: Gabriella Levy, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Brown University; Incoming Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Washington (from December 2024)

Moderated by Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Speaker Bio

Gabriella Levy is a political scientist who studies the ways that people interpret, evaluate, and respond to various forms of political violence in countries in or emerging from civil conflict or other forms of large-scale instability. She focuses on Latin America, particularly, Colombia, and her work lies at the intersection of international relations, comparative politics, and political psychology. Her research has been published or is forthcoming at the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Peace Research, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. 

Presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.