How Could Someone Do That?

"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal."
- Robert A. Heinlein

I read a fascinating article today in the local newspaper about the work of Albert Bandura at Stanford University's Department of Psychology on how people are able to commit immoral acts. He identifies eight excuses used by both organizations and individuals that enable them to override their moral sensibilities. The following excuses (in black) are extracted from this Word document: Corporate Transgressions Through Moral Disengagement. I've added (in blue) some examples.


1. Moral Justification

People do not ordinarily engage in reprehensible conduct until they have justified to themselves the rightness of their actions. In this process of moral justification, detrimental conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of valued social or moral purposes.

"I had to do it!"


2. Euphemistic Labeling

Activities can take on markedly different appearances depending on what they are called. Euphemistic labeling provides a convenient tool for masking reprehensible activities or even conferring a respectable status upon them. Through sanitized and convoluted verbiage, destructive conduct is made benign and those who engage in it are relieved a sense of personal agency.

"It was collateral damage."


3. Advantageous Comparison

Behavior can also assume very different qualities depending on what it is contrasted with. By exploiting advantageous comparison injurious conduct can be rendered benign or made to appear to be little consequence. The more flagrant the contrasted activities, the more likely it is that one's own injurious conduct will appear trifling or even benevolent.

"It's not like I flew a plane into a building!"


4. Displacement of Responsibility

Under displacement of responsibility people view their actions as springing from the social pressures or dictates of others rather than as something for which they are personally responsible. Because they are not the actual agents of their actions, they are spared self-censuring reactions. Hence, they are willing to behave in ways they normally repudiate if a legitimate authority accepts responsibility for the effects of their actions.

"I was just following orders!"


5. Diffusion of Responsibility

The exercise of moral control is also weakened when personal agency is obscured by diffusion of responsibility for detrimental conduct. Any harm done by a group can always be attributed largely to the behavior of others. People behave more cruelly under group responsibility than when they hold themselves personally accountable for their actions.

"Everybody was doing it!"


6. Disregarding or Distorting the Consequences

Additional ways of weakening self-deterring reactions operate by disregarding or distorting the consequences of action. When people pursue activities harmful to others for personal gain, or because of social inducements, they avoid facing the harm they cause or they minimize it. In addition to selective inattention and cognitive distortion of effects, the misrepresentation may involve active efforts to discredit evidence of the harm that is caused.

"I didn't think it would hurt anybody!"


7. Dehumanization

Self-censure for injurious conduct can be disengaged or blunted by dehumanization that divests people of human qualities or attributes bestial qualities to them. Once dehumanized, they are no longer viewed as persons with feelings, hopes, and concerns but as subhuman objects.

"It was only a couple lawyers!"


8. Attribution of Blame

Blaming one's adversaries or compelling circumstances is still another expedient that can serve self-exonerate purposes. In moral disengagement by attribution of blame, people view themselves as faultless victims driven to injurious conduct by forcible provocation. By fixing the blame on others or on circumstances, not only are one's own injurious actions excusable but one can even feel self-righteous in the process.

"He had it coming to him!"


Blog Tag: Opinion