Obscuring the causal link between action and suffering sharply raises obedience

Evidence

If harming a person involves direct bodily contact, the perpetrator is denied the comfort of unnoticing the causal link between his action and the victim’s suffering. The causal link is bare and obvious, and so is the responsibility for pain. When the subjects of Milgram’s experiments were told to force the victims’ hands on to the plate through which the electric shock was allegedly administered, only 30 per cent continued to fulfil the command till the end of the experiment. When, instead of grasping the victim’s hand they were asked only to manipulate the levers of the control desk, the proportion of the obedient went up to 40 per cent. When the victims were hidden behind a wall, so that only their anguished screams were audible, the number of subjects ready to ‘see it to the end’ jumped to 62.5 per cent. Switching off the sounds did not push the percentage much further - only to 65 per cent. It seems we feel mostly through the eyes. The greater was the physical and psychical distance from the victim, the easier it was to be cruel. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 440

Categorization

• XREF: The specific obedience rates (30 to 62.5 percent) are concrete data points worth carrying forward as empirical grounding for bureaucracy-and-violence arguments. — connects to: Duty-driven obedience, not personality, predicts cruelty under authority — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 434; Continuous responsibility shifting across a hierarchy creates free-floating responsibility that incapacitates moral authority — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 463; Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 441 (+4 more)

Related

• Duty-driven obedience, not personality, predicts cruelty under authority (similarity 0.85)
• Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility (similarity 0.85)
• The extermination machinery aimed to eliminate personal sadism and reduce cruelty (similarity 0.83)
• Long intermediary chains let people commit abhorrent acts without role awareness (similarity 0.82)
• Milgram’s obedience theory locates harsh action in situational authority pressure, not internal hatred. (similarity 0.81)
• Rationalized social relationships increase the efficiency of producing inhumanity (similarity 0.80)
• Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely (similarity 0.80)
• Unchecked power over others, not participant nature, drives cruelty (similarity 0.80)
• People usually refuse direct cruelty to humanized others even under authority (similarity 0.80)
• Apparent cruelty can restore political order and loyalty (similarity 0.79)
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Rationalized social organization structurally enables cruelty by mediating responsibility #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 441
• Continuous responsibility shifting across a hierarchy creates free-floating responsibility that incapacitates moral authority #corroborates (0.88) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 463
• Authorization, routinization, and dehumanization erode moral inhibitions against violence #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 93
• Rationalized social relationships increase the efficiency of producing inhumanity #corroborates (0.85) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 436