Moral injury: State of the Science

In this paper, I provide a concise overview of the state of the scientific study of moral injury (MI). I argue that the state of science is immature, characterized by the lack of a paradigmatic theory and a lack of rigor in terms of construct definition and measurement. Because researchers, clinicians, and the media reify the results of empirical and clinical outcome studies that are chiefly exploratory and fraught with internal validity problems, enthusiasm about MI continues to far outweigh scientific and actionable, practice-based knowledge. I posit that the field needs to have epistemic humility about MI, focus on building a paradigmatic model to generate and test hypotheses that will ultimately create knowledge about the causes and consequences of MI, and employ evidence-based assessment and intervention approaches to mitigate and treat the problem. To facilitate research in this area, I summarize the social-functional theory of moral behavior and a new theory of MI based on it. I also make recommendations for future research to advance the field into a normal science, which requires hypothesis-driven research and valid measurement.