Ordinary people become destructive agents through duty, not hostility

Evidence

The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation, a conception of his duties as a subject and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies. This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: that ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 606

A commonly offered explanation is that those who shocked the victim at the most severe level were monsters, the sadistic fringe of society. But if one considers that almost two thirds of the participants fall into the category of “obedient” subjects, and that they represented ordinary people … the argument becomes very shaky. … After witnessing hundreds of ordinary persons submit to the authority in our own experiments, I must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine. The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation, a conception of his duties as a subject and not from any peculiarly aggressive tendencies. This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: that ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 606

Categorization

• DEFINE: Milgram operationalizes ‘the banality of evil’ as obligation-driven conduct rather than peculiar aggression, which is the mechanism per side of perpetrator formation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 606
• XREF: connects to: Situational deference to authority, not coercion, drives obedience to mass-murder regimes — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 46; Ordinary, unselected Germans carried out mass killing when asked — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 315; Milgram’s obedience theory locates harsh action in situational authority pressure, not internal hatred. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 602 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Evil actions usually stem from ordinary people caught in social forces, not evil individuals #corroborates (0.93) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3899
• Effective systems of wrongdoing recruit dutiful subordinates who disown responsibility for harm #corroborates (0.92)
• Duty-driven obedience, not personality, predicts cruelty under authority #corroborates (0.90) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 434
• Organizational factors alone can turn ordinary people into torturers #corroborates (0.88) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 656
• Ordinary people can commit extreme brutality under the right circumstances #expands (0.85) — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 1
• Ordinary considerate people can commit atrocities under dehumanizing conditions #corroborates (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 599
• Duty-based moralities subordinate the individual to maintenance of social norms. #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 553
• Violence-prone individuals are selectively recruited into destructive organizations #contradicts (0.80)
• Preventing evil requires intervening at the organizational, not individual, level #expands (0.80)
• Institutionalized evil by ordinary citizens exceeds malevolent individuals in destructiveness #expands (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3817
• People over-attribute behavior to character rather than situational pressures. #expands (0.78) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 152
• Violence in unequal relations is frequently carried out by subordinates, not hated enemies #corroborates (0.75)
• The enemy operates through friends, servants, and one’s own household #expands (0.75) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 378