People classify evil acts with certainty, consensus, and articulated principles

Evidence

At the level of our everyday functioning, we operate on the basis of “naive psychology,” which comprises the understandings we all carry around with us to analyze the events and actions of our everyday life. These are the sorts of understandings Heider (1958) most successfully called to our attention: those often unexamined understandings, frequently built into everyday vocabularies, that categorize our everyday world and enable us to function in it. At this level, we have both a conceptualization of evil acts that is generally shared and coherent and a theory of what causes these evil actions. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3866 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ordinary people distinguish evil from bad reliably without being able to define it; Multiple consistent evil acts anchor attribution of evil to a person — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3877; People assign evil where rational preparation precedes a horribly irrational act — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3872 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Laypeople hold coherent everyday theories about what makes acts evil #corroborates (0.92) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3866