According to a recent study, people’s tendency to sacrifice unknown bystanders may be influenced by their assumption that these unidentified individuals are enemies. This research was published on October 23, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Scott Danielson and his team from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
According to a recent study, people’s tendency to sacrifice unknown bystanders may be influenced by their assumption that these unidentified individuals are enemies. This research was published on October 23, 2024, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Scott Danielson and his team from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Every year, a similar number of civilians and soldiers lose their lives during warfare, often as a result of airstrikes aimed at enemy forces. Numerous incidents have been reported where innocent civilians were mistakenly identified as enemy combatants, and the actual number of such cases could be even higher, with many going unreported.
Danielson and his colleagues carried out five experiments to explore when individuals are likely to assume that unknown bystanders in combat situations are adversaries, which lessens their worries about collateral damage. A total of 2,204 participants faced a realistic ethical dilemma: a military pilot must choose whether to bomb a dangerous enemy target, even if it means killing a bystander.
The initial two experiments were set against the backdrop of a conflict between the U.S. and ISIS in Iraq. In these scenarios, very few participants agreed to the bombing when the bystander was recognized as an innocent civilian. However, when the bystander’s identity was not known, more than double the number of participants approved the bombing. Remarkably, roughly half of the American participants supported sacrificing unidentified bystanders despite having no proof that they were enemies—this approval rate was higher than for any identified target, barring a known enemy combatant. The following three experiments employed a fictitious war context and demonstrated a similar judgment pattern.
The inclination to endorse bombing was associated with beliefs in total war—the notion that no distinction should be made between military and civilian targets during wartime. The researchers also identified significant differences between the participant samples from different countries; notably, approval for bombing was lower among U.K. participants compared to those from the U.S. This difference is thought to stem from variations in national and cultural perspectives on total war.
The authors suggest that these findings are significant for military planners who must make decisions about attacking locations with enemy militants and unknown bystanders. The results reflect a common tendency among people to view bystanders as enemies, which can have grave repercussions if these individuals are, in fact, innocent civilians. Real-life incidents of civilian casualties from bombings may arise from the same misjudgments observed in this research. To decrease civilian deaths, future studies should focus on ways to mitigate this bias and persuade decision-makers to more carefully assess their targets.
The authors conclude, “Fewer than 1 in 4 Americans support a military strike that results in civilian casualties, but 53% would back a strike if the bystander is ‘unidentified.’ Findings from five studies indicate that individuals tend to view unknown bystanders as enemy combatants instead of civilians, potentially accounting for the high civilian casualties seen in contemporary warfare.”
