Duty and professionalism make repeated harming feel routine and emotionally easy

Evidence

Multiple executions did not produce further increases in moral disengagement in executioners above their initial level. However, performing the executions reduced the level of distress. The executioners described the desensitization through routinization: “No matter what it is, it gets easier over time. The job just gets easier.” The routinization is fostered by a sense of duty and professionalism in carrying out the executions: “The process has become very routine and the next day is easy. It should be that way. The job is something that must be taken care of. It is a duty of my job that has to be done”. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2054

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the broader moral disengagement framework and to the chapter on rationalizing harm; also echoes Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil and Weber’s bureaucratization of violence.
• DEEPTHINKING: The finding that distressing acts get easier precisely because people frame them as duty is a dense paradox about how conscience is neutralized by professionalism rather than hardened by repetition alone.

Related

• Repeated killing reduces distress while moral disengagement plateaus at its initial high level (similarity 0.90)
• Routinizing lethal tasks shifts attention from morality to operational proficiency (similarity 0.80)