Social-psychology and the invasion of Iraq

Abstract

Spanish

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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