Moral disengagement in the Perpetration of InhumanitiesSummary

authorizations by indirection are used to leave the higher ranks of officials unblamable. When harmful conduct does get into the public scene, they are always downplayed and when there is an investigation going on, senior officials constantly happen to be uninterested with the details of the case. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when there are many people involved in a decision that has to be made in a company that has a large labour force. When a decision is made in a group, since everyone is responsible, no one seems to take responsibility for the decision, especially when there are other people to take the blame. Division of labour in a large company can also be used to diffuse responsibility. This is done because whenever there is a dysfunction with a product, it can always be said that the management blames a part of the manufacturing part of the company, and the manufacturing part in turn blames another part of the company. In this way, no one ever takes full accountability for the dysfunction. Dehumanization is another key element in the destruction of moral conduct. This is done by making the enemy seem inhuman, which eventually brings about the mindset that inhumane act can be committed towards the inhuman people. This is used many times in war propaganda which gives soldiers an easier time of killing the enemy. The power of humanization is as strong as any other factor that promotes moral misconduct. The strength of humanization is shown in the essay through the American soldier who helped save many lives because he felt he could relate to the people that needed his help. There were innate feelings of moral goodness to which he was bound. That is why he remarks that he could not turn his back to the villagers. The means humans have an innate sense of suffering for others and can relate to the commonalities between each other rather than the differences which ultimately cause destructive behaviour. Attribution of blame is a form of self-exoneration and can be said to be the method in which people view themselves as faultless victims who are driven to commit injurious conduct because of provocation. A person can select from the chain of events a defensive act by the adversary and portray it as initiating provocation. Victims then get blamed for bringing suffering on themselves. Self-exoneration is also achievable by viewing one's harmful conduct as forced by compelling circumstances rather than as a personal decision. By fixing the blame on others or on circumstances, not only are one's own injurious actions excusable but one can even feel self-righteous in the process. Gradualistic moral disengagement refers to the process by which after committing an act over and over again, one steadily comes to justify it in one’s mind. This can be shown by the example of a prison guard.  The guard’s role was limited to strapping the legs to the death chair. This spared him the image of executioner, "I never pulled the trigger. I wasn't the executioner," he explained. Executioners require heavy use of euphemisms as well. The guard received $35 extra for each execution. In a linguistic rechristening of deathly gassing as benevolent caring, he remarked "That

was a lot of money for baby-sitting." He described the changes he had undergone over the course of 126 executions as follows: "It never bothered me, when I was down at their legs strapping them in. But after I'd get home, I'd think about it. But then it would go away. And then, at last, it was just another job." Moral disengagement in the selling of deadly weapons is another topic covered in this essay. Many times, people that sell weapons, whether they be of huge destructive force or a simple handgun, they often downplay the impact of their merchandise. The essay provides a beautiful example of this type of activity. A man named Terpil became a weapons merchant after he fell from grace at the Central Intelligence Agency. He masked his death operations in the euphemisms of a legitimate business fulfilling "consumer needs," under the sanitized name, Intercontinental Technology. To spare himself any self-censure for contributing to human atrocities, he actively avoided knowledge of the purposes to which his weapons would be put. "I don't ever want to know that," he said. When asked whether he was ever haunted by any thoughts about the human suffering his deathly wares might cause, he explained that a weapons dealer cannot afford to think about human consequences, "If I really thought about the consequences all the time, I certainly wouldn't have been in this business. You have to blank it off." Lastly, moral development is typically studied in terms of abstract principles of morality. Adults who differ in conduct do not necessarily differ in moral values. At a general level, almost everyone has the same moral principles. Differences lie in the way in which individuals choose to commit moral disengagement.