Creating Prosocial Teams: Using Prosocial Science to Help Teams Thrive While Healing Moral Injury
- Christian Hughes
- May 4
- 4 min read
Introduction: The Hidden Wounds of Moral Injury
Moral injury is not a disorder. It is not a broken brain, a chemical imbalance, or a flaw in individual resilience. It is a wound—deep, relational, and ethical—inflicted when someone experiences or participates in events that violate their core moral beliefs. Often, it is the result of betrayal: by a leader, an institution, or a system, in moments that matter most.
This is a common but often unspoken experience among veterans, healthcare workers, first responders, and others on the frontlines of service. They may carry shame, anger, guilt, and a deep sense of alienation. And while trauma therapies can help, moral injury requires something more: not just psychological healing, but moral and social repair.
Beyond the Individual: Why Moral Injury is a Group-Level Problem
Standard approaches to healing focus on the individual—their symptoms, their story, their healing journey. But moral injury is not just about what happened to someone. It's about what happened between people. It is relational and systemic in nature.
A veteran may feel betrayed by a command structure that ignored ethical concerns. A nurse may feel complicit in systemic neglect during a healthcare crisis. In both cases, the injury stems from the breakdown of trust in shared norms, leadership, and community.
That’s why healing must go beyond the individual. It must include restoring the health of the groups, systems, and communities involved.
The Prosocial Framework: A Science of Cooperative Healing
Prosocial is a groundbreaking approach that integrates three powerful strands:
Evolutionary Science – Recognizing that humans are deeply social creatures, shaped by natural selection to live, cooperate, and survive in groups.
Ostrom’s Core Design Principles – Based on Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom's research into how communities sustainably manage shared resources without top-down control.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – A process-based behavioral approach that builds psychological flexibility, helping people respond to difficult thoughts and feelings in ways that align with their values.
Together, these form a model that is both scalable and personal, ideal for rebuilding the moral and cooperative fabric torn by moral injury.
Ostrom’s Design Principles as Moral Repair Tools
Elinor Ostrom identified eight key principles that enable groups to manage themselves effectively and fairly. When viewed through the lens of moral injury, these become powerful tools for moral repair:
Strong Group Identity and Purpose – Reconnecting individuals to a sense of shared mission and values after a crisis.
Fair Distribution of Costs and Benefits – Addressing perceptions of injustice, exploitation, or unequal sacrifice.
Inclusive and Fair Decision-Making – Ensuring everyone has a voice, especially those previously silenced.
Monitoring Agreed-Upon Behaviors – Restoring accountability and transparency.
Graduated Responses to Misbehavior – Creating fair processes for addressing wrongdoing, rather than scapegoating or impunity.
Fast and Fair Conflict Resolution – Replacing avoidance or top-down decrees with trust-building dialogue.
Authority to Self-Govern – Empowering groups to shape their own ethical norms.
Collaborative Relations with Other Groups – Avoiding isolation and building networks of mutual support.
By working through these principles, groups can begin to repair the moral contracts that bind them together.
The Role of ACT in Moral Recovery
Prosocial incorporates ACT not just as a therapy, but as a set of skills that make cooperative living possible. These include:
Defusion: Stepping back from rigid, self-damaging moral judgments ("I'm a monster").
Acceptance: Making room for pain without being ruled by it.
Values Clarification: Reconnecting with what matters, especially after disillusionment.
Committed Action: Taking meaningful steps to live those values, even in the presence of distress.
ACT helps people shift from being stuck in the pain of the past to building a future rooted in chosen values and collective purpose.
From Betrayal to Belonging: A New Way Forward
Consider a group of people brought together not by profession but by a shared experience of moral pain: veterans, yes—but also healthcare workers, social workers, humanitarian aid staff, whistleblowers, and others who have borne witness to or felt complicit in ethically compromising situations.
Through the Prosocial process, they:
Share their stories in a space governed by fairness and mutual respect
Rebuild a shared purpose that reflects their values today
Design agreements for how they want to treat each other and resolve conflicts
This is not just group therapy. It is community regeneration. It is the slow, vital work of moral ecology: tending to the relationships and systems that sustain our sense of what is right.
Whether it’s a paramedic grappling with impossible triage choices during a crisis, a civil servant confronting systemic injustice, or a teacher forced to enforce policies that conflict with their values, the path from betrayal to belonging is a shared one. It begins with dialogue, is nurtured by shared governance, and grows through committed, values-aligned action.
And the Prosocial model is not only a way for teams to thrive, or a pathway to recovery for those suffering harm; it is also a form of prevention. Groups that apply these principles proactively—before crisis hits—are more likely to create environments where people can thrive, speak up, and support one another in the face of ethical challenges. By embedding shared purpose, fair process, and accountability into the structure of a group, we reduce the conditions under which moral injuries are likely to occur.
Conclusion: Healing Requires a New Kind of Group
Moral injury calls us to do more than treat symptoms. It invites us to repair the fabric of our moral worlds. The Prosocial model offers a roadmap for doing just that—through science, compassion, and collective action.
By integrating evolutionary principles, cooperative governance, and psychological flexibility, we can move from betrayal to belonging. And in doing so, we can help veterans, healthcare workers, and others on the frontlines find their way home to themselves and to each other—while also creating healthier, more just systems that protect the moral integrity of everyone within them.
Christian Hughes is a Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor, and Trainer, specialising in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy & Moral Injury. If you'd like to know more about applying Prosocial ACT to your workplace, please get in touch.
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