Desire to punish offenders should amplify the denial of their agency.
Evidence
If the moral disengagement hypothesis is correct, then denial of agency to harmful agents should be amplified when motivations to see the agent punished are made salient. It follows that if people dehumanize harmful agents as a means of legitimating punitive reprisals we would expect people to increase their level of dehumanization—including denying them high levels of agency—as a function of their desire to see the perpetrator brought to justice. — Mansur Khamitov, Jeff D. Rotman, and Jared Piazza, Perceiving the Agency of Harmful Agents, 167 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Using the “bad apples” exoneration, Keating attributed the savings and loans collapse to a few “miscreants” in the industry who were mismanaged by the regulators. He alleged that the “miscreants” had singled him out as a scapegoat to intimidate others in the industry: “The government is doing a fantastic job in making an example of me for everybody else to shut up.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1409 (
#exemplifies, via linked claim)
Those taking part in the scheme also had the vexing psychological problem of how to retain their self-respect while engaging in criminal conduct. This required sanitizing the illegal behavior and diminishing personal responsibility for it. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1388 (
#exemplifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
- XREF: connects to: If moral disengagement drives it, desire to punish amplifies agency denial. — Mansur Khamitov, Jeff D. Rotman, and Jared Piazza, Perceiving the Agency of Harmful…, 167; Offenders reframe themselves as scapegoats of regulators to deny responsibility. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1409; Criminals must preserve self-respect by sanitizing and deflecting blame for misconduct. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1388 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- If moral disengagement drives it, desire to punish amplifies agency denial.
#corroborates(0.95) — Mansur Khamitov, Jeff D. Rotman, and Jared Piazza, Perceiving the Agency of Harmful Agents, 167 - Offenders reframe themselves as scapegoats of regulators to deny responsibility.
#exemplifies(0.78) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1409 - Criminals must preserve self-respect by sanitizing and deflecting blame for misconduct.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1388 - Statistical abstraction itself criminalizes prisoners by erasing their differences.
#complicates(0.74) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 247 - Organizations hide harm by denying consequences, then by denying responsibility for them.
#expands(0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4012