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Abstract

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The invasion of Iraq by American and British forces is analyzed from the standpoint of social psychology. The following social phenomena and events are discussed: (a) the role of groupthink in the intelligence failure; (b) asymmetrical consequences of reward and punishment and the role of causal attribution in responsibility assignment as explanations for the alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by Iraq;(c) dissonance avoidance and the refusal by those responsible for the invasion to accept that there were no WMD in Iraq; (d) balance theory, retributive justice and the attempt to link Saddam to bin Laden after the acceptance of the inexistence of WMD; (e) de-individuation, power of the situation, and obedience to authority and the Abu-Ghraib tortures; (f) the escalation of violence and the psychology of malignant social processes. The paper ends with a distinction between science and applications of science, and gives some recommendations to achieve peace in the world based on social psychological knowledge.

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Social-psychology and the invasion of Iraq

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