Heavier moral burden predicts heavier reliance on disengagement mechanisms

Evidence

The patterns of moral disengagement were much the same for the three penitentiaries. Members of the execution team, who face the most formidable moral problem, made the heaviest use of all of the mechanisms for disengaging moral self-sanctions. They adopted moral, economic, and societal security justifications for the death penalty. They ascribed subhuman qualities to the condemned inmates and disavowed a sense of agentic responsibility in the executions. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2057

Categorization

• XREF: The dehumanization mechanism here parallels the other dehumanization findings in this book’s earlier chapters on war and genocide; also the subhuman-ascription wording recalls the Rwandan genocide chapter. — connects to: 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; Self-maintenance criteria for moral worth fail to set defensible boundaries — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 775