4.5 Ethics and Social Psychology
As the above discussion illustrates, while ethics relates to individual behavior, it also involves our relations with others. A number of concepts from social psychology can shed insight on how we justify unethical behavior in our interactions with others.
Moral disengagement occurs when people assuage their guilt by justifying their unethical actions.
In 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram began an experiment that would change the way we understand how people behave in the ways they do. He created a scenario where subjects were brought into a laboratory to take part in an experiment. They were told they would be helping in a study about learning motivators and that they would be “teaching” a third party through the use of electric shocks. Unbeknownst to the volunteer, both the experiment leader and the learner were confederates in the experiment and the “teacher” was actually the focus of the experiment. The teacher was instructed by the leader to administer increasingly higher voltage shocks to the learner who was in a separated area for every wrong answer. While the learner actually received no shock, they would cry out in pain and at some points mentioned they had a heart condition. Over sixty percent of those participating pressed the button to give the maximum shock level of 450 volts. They did this because the leader, an authority figure, told them they needed to continue for the experiment despite knowing that at that voltage death was likely to result.
What does this experiment tell us about people? Were Milgram’s volunteers just a bad group of people? Not likely, as the experiment has been replicated around the world with similar results. How could ordinary people engage in horrible conduct? It was question that vexed the world as the Nazi war crime tribunals brought forth evidence of the atrocities the Nazi’s committed in pursuance of the Holocaust. So how do people engage in behavior that is clearly unethical and morally wrong?
To answer that question Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura used his work in social cognitive theory to describe selective moral disengagement. This theory explains that people will use six different mechanisms to disengage their internal morality so that they can justify and assuage their guilt for their actions they recognize as immoral. Moral disengagement mechanisms are really a self-defense mechanism each person uses so they can live with themselves when they do things they know are wrong.
Each of the following kinds of moral disengagement involves dehumanizing the recipient of the immoral action. It requires not only seeing “them” as separate, but as less than human. The more that you identify with others and see them as similar to yourself, the harder it is to harm them. Perceived similarity evokes empathy. Consequently, to get people to act in immoral ways towards others requires depriving them of their humanity. During the Rwandan genocide, Hutu leaders described ethnic Tutsis as “cockroaches” in an effort to incite hate and violence against what they perceived as a rival ethnic group. This helped former neighbors to slaughter one another with clubs and machetes, leading to the death of an estimated 800,000 individuals in 100 days. While genocide and violence is the extreme, dehumanization can have pernicious effects in business as well. Viewing employees as “disposable workers” or “commodities” makes it easier for management or owners to be morally disengaged from the individuals that comprise their workforce. If you don’t identify with your employees, you are less likely to care that they work in safe, healthy environments or are adequately compensated for their labor.
The following six mechanisms all dehumanize the victim in one way or another. They are also fairly universal and span all cultures. Despite the universality of these mechanisms, each person will have some disengagement strategies that they use most frequently while others may never be part of their behavioral justification. As you read through these six tools, think about times when you have experienced them in your own life, or seen others using them to justify their behavior.
Moral justification is a type of moral disengagement by which pernicious conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worthy or moral purposes.
People use moral justification as a means of making their conduct seem less blameworthy. As Bandura explains,
“In this process of moral justification, pernicious conduct is made personally and socially acceptable by portraying it as serving socially worthy or moral purposes. People then can act on a moral imperative and preserve their view of themselves as moral agents while inflicting harm on others.”
Most often seen in the context of military action or warfare, moral justification relies on justifying violent and often atrocious behavior behind the veil of working toward some higher or more noble good. Religion, nationalism and other ideologies are usually invoked to allow the perpetrator to commit acts a person would otherwise never be able to live with.
Euphemistic language obscures the ethical issues by using polite language in place of harsher language.
Language is a powerful tool, it helps define and organize the world around us. When morally disengaging, the language ascribed to conduct can be a powerful tool in living with those actions. Bandura describes this as,
“Euphemistic language is used widely to make harmful conduct respectable and to reduce personal responsibility for it. Euphemising is an injurious weapon. People behave much more cruelly when assaultive actions are given a sanitised label than when they are called aggression.”
Using euphemistic language has progressed from a tool used by individuals to a policy in some areas, including the military. Civilian deaths are called “collateral damage” and shooting a colleague is “friendly fire.” In business people prefer to talk about “right sizing” or “reducing costs” instead of firing people or cutting their salaries.
Advantageous Comparison occurs when a person compares their action to something far more heinous.
Advantageous comparison occurs when a person compares their action to something far more heinous. “At least I am not a serial killer,” would be a hyperbolic example, but more common examples abound. “At least I only take office supplies, Frank takes money out of the cash drawer.” While the compared activity in no way relates to the act the individual engages in, it tends to make a person feel somewhat morally superior to others and therefore not as bad of a person.
Displacement of Responsibility occurs when a person claims an abdication of their moral judgment in favor of some authority figure.
While the above mechanisms focus on minimizing the negatives of the action in question, displacing responsibility and it’s counterparts take a slightly different psychological path. The perpetrator has no illusion about the immorality of the action, but they claim an abdication of their moral judgment in favor of some authority figure. The infamous “I was following orders” defense is a prime example of this kind of disengagement.
Diffusion of Responsibility occurs when a person shifts the responsibility of moral judgment to others.
Similar to the appeal to authority under displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility again shifts the responsibility of moral judgment to others. In this case, instead of an authority figure, the actor is claiming that the moral action was not their responsibility. One example would be driving past a car wreck instead of stopping to help. The defense is no one else was stopping, and it was not my responsibility to help others anyway. This is a particularly pernicious mechanism in organizations that rely on group decision making, where any one individual can claim they were not the only ones and it was really the decision of the group. This mentality often occurs in riots or other malevolent group activities.
Disregard of Consequences occurs when people ignore the consequences of their actions, often as a result of distance between then actor and the consequence.
Committing an immoral act is easier if the consequences of those acts are somehow removed or not visible to the perpetrator For example, in recent years, the increasing use of drones in military battles and engagements has led people to question the ethical nature of their use. If warfare looks like a video game played remotely, are individuals more likely to engage in it or less likely to question its legitimacy? The ethical consequences of being further removed from the consequences of decisions also has implications for organizational structure. Hierarchical organizations or chains of command tend to place key decision maker(s) far from the individuals who must implement the decisions and deal with the consequences. It is much harder to harm others or cause suffering when you are faced with the results first hand.
Attribution of Blame occurs when the the perpetrator of an action shifts the blame to the recipient of the action.
The classic method of dehumanizing involves shifting the blame from the perpetrator of an action to the recipient of the action. By “blaming the victim” a person engaging in morally questionable activity can shift responsibility and guilt from themselves and onto another person. This is often seen in situations such as blaming sexual assault on the way a woman is dressed or the victims of financial fraud as being greedy. In each instance, the perpetrator of the wrong is trying to shift the blame to someone else.
This reading, along with the others in this chapter, should help you explore the questions “Am I aware of how my decisions impact others?” and “What influences my thinking?” Exploring these questions will aid your personal ethical development.