Ordinary considerate people can commit atrocities under dehumanizing conditions

Evidence

Private Lynndie England, a friendly young woman who always aimed to please others, became the public face of the prisoner abuse scandal because she posed for many of the photographs. Her family and friends were shocked by the sight of what England had become: “It’s so not her. It’s not in her nature to do something like that. There’s not a malicious bone in her body” (Dao, 2004). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 599

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the Milgram and Stanford prison experiment findings that situational forces override disposition. — connects to: Routine dehumanization protects prostitutes from encountering clients as free persons.; Ordinary people become destructive agents through duty, not hostility — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 606; Dehumanization of targeted groups makes violence against them seem reasonable.