Diffusion of responsibility among many actors dilutes each one’s felt guilt

Evidence

Although divine sanctioning helps to eliminate personal responsibly, intentionally killing a human being requires a great deal of displacement and diffusion of responsibility. Various methods have included hanging, gassing, firing squad, and electrocution. Death by firing squad is less disturbing for the executioners because it involves diffused responsibility. One member of the squad is randomly issued a gun containing a blank cartridge, whereas the others are issued guns with live ammunition. The blank cartridge, called a “conscience round,” is intended to allay guilt because no one in the squad will know who fired the fatal shot (Firing squad, n.d.). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1933

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘conscience round’ blank cartridge as engineered to diffuse guilt among the firing squad.
• XREF: Connects to the vault’s social-conservatism/authoritarianism claims about ordinary people rationalizing harmful policy through group-based diffusion.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1933