Hierarchical distance from harm weakens moral restraint on actions

Evidence

Most organizations involve hierarchical chains of command in which superiors formulate plans and intermediaries transmit them to functionaries, who then carry them out. The further removed individuals are from the destructive end results, the weaker the restraining power of injurious effects. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 451

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on Milgram’s authority-and-distance findings; also parallels Eichmann-in-Jerusalem banality analysis and organizational diffusion of responsibility. — connects to: Closeness without distance is the individual’s real protection against social infringement — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 109; Reductive mechanism’s emotional distance normalises modern warfare and machine-economy harms — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 448