Institutional evil requires a social psychology of how settings override members’ moral scruples

Evidence

We now need to create-and the authors mentioned in this essay are creating-a psychology and sociology of how human institutions can purposively move or accidentally lurch toward causing these actions, somehow neutralizing, suspending, overriding, or replacing the moral scruples of their members. That psychology will inevitably be a social and organizational one, rather than one centered on the individual acting alone, although, as all of them show, it will draw on the conceptualization of an individual-level psychology, particularly to explain how the Social organization for the production of evil 539 individual participates in his or her training in the social movement and continues to access his or her own particular skills in the service of the pathological group projects. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4030

Categorization

• XREF: The neutralization/suspension of moral scruples mechanism parallels the identity-suspension dynamics central to my strategic-essentialism question about how roles can be held without full self-identification. — connects to: Evildoing is learned through socialization into harmful organizations — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3969; Organizational settings enable humans to adapt to moral wrongdoing at psychic cost — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3913; Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 441 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Collective moral disengagement arises from members mutually exonerating each role in a shared system #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 685
• Preventing evil requires intervening at the organizational, not individual, level #expands (0.82)
• Organizational settings enable humans to adapt to moral wrongdoing at psychic cost #qualifies (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3913
• Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility #corroborates (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 441
• Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality #expands (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 612
• Evil acts mainly arise from organizational pathologies rather than intrinsically evil individuals #corroborates (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4037
• Social organization neutralizes morality by making action adiaphoric, neither good nor evil #corroborates (0.78) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 613
• People disengage moral self-sanctions through euphemism, justification, and dehumanization #expands (0.78) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2096
• Evildoing is learned through socialization into harmful organizations #corroborates (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3969
• Moral disengagement mechanisms enable justification of in-group harm. #expands (0.75) — Sonia Roccas and Yechiel Klar and Ido Liviatan, The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt, 47
• Internal moral self-sanctions can be neutralized by psychosocial mechanisms #expands (0.75)