Expert legitimacy can override moral drives even when actors know their acts are wrong

Evidence

For Milgram’s guinea pigs, the ‘problem’ was the experiment set and administered by the scientific experts. Milgram’s experts saw to it that the expert-led actors should, unlike the workers of the Sodomka factory for whom Just’s memo was destined, entertain no doubts as to the suffering their actions were causing, that there should be no chance for a ‘I did not know’ excuse. What Milgram’s experiment has proved in the end is the power of expertise and its capacity to triumph over moral drives. Moral people can be driven into committing immoral acts even if they know (or believe) that the acts are immoral – providing that they are convinced that the experts (people who, by definition, know something they themselves do not know) have defined their actions as necessary. After all, most actions in our society are not legitimized by the discussion of their objectives, but by the advice or instruction offered by the people in the know. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 564

Categorization

• XREF: Carries the Milgram finding from earlier chapters forward; will connect to Islamophobia readings on expert/academic legitimation of exclusion. — connects to: Bureaucratic distance makes actors’ moral standards irrelevant to operation success — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 295; Rationality of the actor and of the action can diverge, making reason self-destructive. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 423; Expert and lay predictions of obedience were wrong by a wide margin — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 437 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Defines ‘power of expertise’ as the mechanism: actions are legitimized by expert instruction rather than discussion of objectives.

Related

• Expert and lay predictions of obedience were wrong by a wide margin (similarity 0.85)
• Fighting for universally beloved causes shields an actor from scrutiny of their methods (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Blind trust in authority can be culpable stupidity rather than virtue #corroborates (0.82)
• Expert professionals can perpetuate unfounded beliefs through their actions. #exemplifies (0.75) — Lynley Hood, A City Possessed, 1602
• Acting-trust pressure can rearrange beliefs to justify exceptions #qualifies (0.73)
• Confidence in expert systems can be catastrophically misplaced #complicates (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 13
• Moral dispositions resist contrary incentives yet people overestimate their behavioral role #contradicts (0.72) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 216