Institutionalized evil by ordinary people outweighs malevolent individuals.

Evidence

We begin this section with John Darley’s social psychological analysis of one of the most important and least systematically studied topics within the field of political psychology, namely the organization and production of evil. After exploring conceptual definitions of “evil,” Darley distinguishes between two different forms of evil-doing: (a) the kernel of evil form of evil-doing, which results from the actions of truly malevolent individuals, and (b) institutionalized evil, which is the product of “normal” individuals working within the context of malevolent institutions or organizations. Darley points out that while “kernel of evil” malevolence is certainly a problem, it is neither as destructive nor as philosophically perplexing as the institutionalized evil perpetrated by ordinary citizens. At the heart of Darley’s project is the drive to understand how malevolent organizations are created and sustained. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3817 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

These, I want to assert, are examples of the major message arising from the books. Its validity is strengthened by the independent convergence of these books on this conclusion. The books examine a variety of evil acts. Lifton, using a close lens, examines the involvement of doctors in the Nazi death camps. Staub, using a longer lens, examines many episodes of genocide, mass killing, and torture. Milgram, as is well known, examined the behavior of individuals in a “psychological experiment” in which they were ordered to give what seemed to be painful and harmful electric shocks to others, thus giving us what may be regarded as the closest possible experimental analogue to evil. Kelman and Hamilton tell us a good deal, indeed sometimes as much as we can bear to read, about the circumstances leading U.S. Army units to the massacre of Vietnamese women and children at My Lai. As we will see, the proposition that arises from all these books is that many evil actions are not the volitional products of individual evildoers. Instead, they are in some sense societal products, in which a complex series of social forces interact to cause individuals to commit multiple acts of stunning evil. In that process, the individuals committing the evil are themselves changed. They become evil although they still do not show the demonic properties suggested by our conventional views of evil. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3899 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Institutionalized evil by ordinary citizens exceeds malevolent individuals in destructiveness — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3817; Evil actions usually stem from ordinary people caught in social forces, not evil individuals — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3899; Ordinary healthy people become cruel perpetrators under conducive social roles. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 681 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Institutionalized evil by ordinary citizens exceeds malevolent individuals in destructiveness #corroborates (1.00) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3817
• Evil actions usually stem from ordinary people caught in social forces, not evil individuals #corroborates (0.95) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3899