Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control Quotes

“Where everyone is responsible, no one is really responsible.”
― Albert Bandura, Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control

“It requires conducive social conditions, rather than monstrous people, to produce heinous deeds.”
― Albert Bandura, Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control

“It requires a strong sense of responsibility to be a good functionary. In situations involving obedience to authority, people carry out orders partly to honor the obligations they have undertaken. One must, therefore, distinguish between two levels of responsibility—duty to one's superiors, and accountability for the effects of one's actions.”
― Albert Bandura, Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control

“Authorities usually invite and support detrimental conduct in insidious ways that minimize personal responsibility for what is happening. Moreover, the intended purpose of sanctioned destructiveness is usually disguised so that neither issuers nor perpetrators regard their actions as censurable. When reprehensible practices are publicized, they are officially dismissed as only isolated incidents arising through misunderstanding of what had, in fact, been authorized. Efforts are made to limit any blame to subordinates, who are portrayed as misguided or overzealous. Investigators who go searching for "smoking guns" display naivete about the surreptitious manner in which culpable behavior is sanctioned and executed. Generally one finds mazy devices of nonresponsibility rather than smoking guns.”
― Albert Bandura, Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control

“What is immoral to do is immoral to threaten.”
― Albert Bandura, Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control

“Analyses of moral disengagement mechanisms usually draw heavily on examples from military and political violence. This tends to convey the impression that selective disengagement of self-sanctions occurs only under extraordinary circumstances. The truth is quite the contrary. Such mechanisms operate in everyday situations in which decent people routinely perform activities having injurious human effects, to further their own interests or for profit.”
― Albert Bandura, Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control