Preventing evil requires intervening at the organizational, not individual, level

Evidence

I continue to believe in that message, but I find I cannot apply it with such conviction as I used to when I think about the cases discussed here. To resist the psychological forces characteristic of the organizations discussed herein, pressures which strike me as often highly coercive and reinforced by real physical threats, requires a rare degree of individual strength indeed. This plea for resistance at the individual level to the contrary, the real action in evil-prevention may lie elsewhere. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4036 (#expands, via linked claim)

Where does it lie? What I suggest is that the prototypes we carry around about the sources of evil actions, which assign those actions to individuals who are themselves in some way intrinsically evil, causes us to ignore the more likely source of harmdoing actions, which is organizational in nature. If harmdoing actions are in the main committed by individuals caught up in organizations and their pathology, then prevention or amelioration of evil may be best done at the organizational level. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4037 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Institutional evil requires a social psychology of how settings override members’ moral scruples — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4030; Resisting organizational evil individually is too rare to be the main preventive lever — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4036; Ordinary people become destructive agents through duty, not hostility — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 606 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Individual resistance cannot withstand coercive organizational evil, so prevention must be structural. #expands (0.95) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4036
• Evil acts mainly arise from organizational pathologies rather than intrinsically evil individuals #corroborates (0.93) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4037
• Individual resistance is too weak to counter coercive organizational pressure #corroborates (0.92)