Diffusion of responsibility, distortion of harm, and dehumanization each neutralize moral restraint

Evidence

At the agency locus, people evade personal accountability for harmful conduct by displacing responsibility to others and by dispersing it widely so that no one bears responsibility. This absolves them of blame for the harm they cause. At the outcome locus, perpetrators disregard, minimize, distort, or even dispute the injurious effects of their actions. As long as harmful effects are out of sight and out of mind there is no moral issue to contend with because no perceived harm has been done. At the victim locus, perpetrators exclude those they maltreat from their category of humanity by divesting them of human qualities or attributing animalistic qualities to them. Rendering their victims subhuman weakens moral qualms over treating them harshly. The additional moral disengagement at the victim locus blames the victims for bringing the maltreatment on themselves or attributes it to compelling circumstances. In this mode of self-exoneration, perpetrators view themselves as victims forced to behave injuriously by wrongdoers’ offensive behavior or by force of circumstances. By viewing themselves as victims, they may feel self-righteous in their retaliatory actions. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 62

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘perpetrators view themselves as victims’ point echoes Milgram’s participants and also the bystander effect literature on diffusion of responsibility. — connects to: Technological rationality neutralizes guilt and conscience under reification — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 346; Moral ideals reduced to subjective preference fatally weaken opposition to reality — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 555; Moral disengagement mechanisms enable justification of in-group harm. — Sonia Roccas and Yechiel Klar and Ido Liviatan, The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt: Modes…, 47 (+2 more)
• STORYSTEM: The self-righteous-victim reversal is a rich engine for a morally ambiguous antagonist — a character who genuinely believes their cruelty is retaliation against provocation.