Believing one is powerless in a system eliminates felt responsibility for actions
Evidence
Roskies explains that this is because people’s judgments of responsibility are unaffected by whether they subscribe to a deterministic or indeterministic view of the world. However, the case is quite the contrary. In point of fact, individuals who believe they are simply powerless cogs in a system feel no responsibility for their actions, whereas those who believe they have some influence over what they do hold themselves at least partially accountable. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 324
Categorization
- XREF: Directly underpins the vault’s claim about ordinary people rationalizing support for Islamophobic policy — the perceived-powerlessness mechanism is the psychological lever Bandura names. — connects to: The master’s belief in the slave’s inessentiality is an illusion masking real dependency — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 199; das Man drains personal responsibility by taking over decisions that should be our own — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 264; Control deprivation triggers compensatory superstitious and conspiratorial thinking. — Dmitrij Agroskin and Eva Jonas, Controlling death by defending…, 23
- DEFINE: Distinguishes determinism-as-belief (a felt, causal psychological state) from determinism-as-metaphysical-thesis — the operative variable is the subject’s belief.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 324