Invisible victims receive far harsher treatment than visible ones

Evidence

Generally, it might be thought that there are two factors at work. The first is the impact of depersonification. In a number of experiments, it has been noted that subjects who cannot see or hear the person to whom they are reacting tend to inflict far more extreme punishments upon one another. The most famous study demonstrating this is Milgram (1963). In this, most subjects were willing to give electric shocks, which they had some grounds for believing could be dangerous and possibly lethal, to another person when that person was unseen and in another room. Most were not willing to do so when seated right next to the recipient of the shocks. Clearly, anything which increases contact between parties will reduce this tendency. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 699

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s core thesis: Saramago’s blindness removes observability of victims, and Luhmann’s familiarity-trust framework predicts exactly this escalation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The depersonification effect is the empirical hinge connecting sight/observability to moral restraint — the precise mechanism the reader’s theoretical synthesis requires.