Loyalty to a charismatic leader can override an accomplice’s own moral self-censure

Evidence

Although a dutiful functionary, O’Reilly was haunted by self-devaluative reactions to her role in the doping scheme. When she was persuaded once to smuggle pills across a national border, she “felt no better than a drugs runner” (Rankin, 2013). At other times, “some of it made me ashamed.” She was caught between loyalty and self-censure. Loyalty overruled morality. “I felt bound by a sense of loyalty to do it, even though I knew it was wrong.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 232

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Political gratitude toward a past host can blind leaders to a regime’s current crimes — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 327; Charismatic dictatorships inverted Weber’s claim that heroic leaders save passive masses. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 14; Charismatic leaders exploit threat to create scapegoats and bring evil into being. — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory: Implications…, 59