Subordinates act cruelly when authorities take responsibility for the consequences

Evidence

Moral control operates most strongly when people acknowledge that they have caused harm by their detrimental actions. The second set of disengagement practices—displacement of responsibility—operates by obscuring or minimizing one’s agentive role in causing harm. People will behave in ways they would normally repudiate if a legitimate authority accepts responsibility for the effects of their conduct (Kelman & Hamilton, 1989; Milgram, 1974). … With displaced responsibility, they view their actions as arising from the dictates of authorities. Because they are not the actual agents of their actions, they are spared self-condemning reactions. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 401

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages Milgram’s obedience experiments and Kelman & Hamilton’s work on authority-authorized violence — the standard scholarly anchor for displacement of responsibility. — connects to: Multinational managers disowned responsibility while their workers were beaten. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 545; Bureaucratic officials derive enjoyment from disavowing personal responsibility — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 100