Diffuse responsibility and insulated authority permit denial of collectively caused harm

Evidence

In most social systems, diffusion and displacement of responsibility figure prominently in self-exoneration for harm that is caused collectively. People do not feel personally responsible if they view their harmful actions as prescribed by authorities. The authorities themselves create mazy chains of authorization, sanction detrimental conduct surreptitiously, keep themselves intentionally uninformed, and devise insulating social arrangements that permit deniability of wrongdoing (Bandura, 1999). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1826

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels existing vault claims about how ordinary people rationalize supporting harmful policy — displacement of responsibility up corporate hierarchies is a concrete mechanism for the Islamophobia-support rationalization trajectory, and complements authoritarianism claims about deference to authority. — connects to: Military institutions can classify toxic exposure harm as non-combat-related to deny pensions — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 606; Proving liability requires tracing contaminants through groundwater to their destination — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 994; Independent institutions can check a perpetrator group’s escalating destructiveness (+2 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1826