Description:

This presentation addresses how otherwise good people can do cruel things. They do so through selective disengagement of moral self-sanctions from inhumane conduct. At the behavior locus, worthy ends are used to sanctify harmful means by social and moral justification. At the agency locus, people obscure personal responsibility by displacement and diffusion of responsibility. At the outcomes locus, the detrimental social effects of one’s actions are ignored, minimized, or disrupted. At the victim locus, perpetrators dehumanize and blame recipients for bringing the maltreatment on themselves. These mechanisms operate at both individual and social systems levels. Disengagement of moral agency is illustrated in the workings of the corporate world, terrorism, the use of military force, application of the death penalty, and in ecological destruction that is heating the planet and making it less habitable.

Educational Objectives:

1. To describe the different mechanisms through which people disengage moral self-sanctions from detrimental conduct.
2. To list the social conditions that foster moral disengagement.

*Sessions may be edited for content and to preserve confidentiality*