Page 112 - The Power to Change Anything

Make the Undesirable Desirable 101

est sense. In addition to crimes against humanity, let’s include
ignoring the legitimate needs of a customer, eliminating jobs
with no consideration for the human toll, setting up another
department to fail, or parking in a handicapped spot for a quick
dash into the grocery store.
How can humans so easily disconnect their behavior from
the negative outcomes they’re causing? What can influence
masters do to help people connect their behavior to their
results and in so doing reconnect people to their espoused val-
ues of treating others with dignity and respect?
First, we must understand how people can abuse others
without feeling bad. The mechanism that allows people to act
viciously, but with impunity, is actually quite simple. When we
see less of the humanity of another person or when we disre-
spect people, it becomes easy for us to dismiss our actions
toward them. We’re nice to good people, but bad people, well,
they deserve whatever we give them.
Albert Bandura tested this proposition in a way that shows
just how insidious dehumanization can be. He asked, “Can a
one-word label that minimizes a victim’s humanity turn good
people into perpetrators?” Here is how the study worked.
Bandura told subjects that they’d be helping to train stu-
dents from a nearby college by shocking them when they
erred on a task. Their shock box had 10 levels of intensity that
they could deliver over 10 trials. Just as the study was about to
begin, the subjects were allowed to “overhear” an assistant talk-
ing to the experimenter. The assistant uttered one of three
phrases:

Neutral: “The subjects from the other school are here.”
Humanizing: “The subjects from the other school are here.
They seem nice.”
Dehumanizing: “The subjects from the other school are
here. They seem like animals.”