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6. SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY OF MASS COMMUNICATION 135

pressures from different factions within society seeking to sway it to their
ideology. Research on the role of the mass media in the social construction
of reality carries important social implications.
Self-sanctions are activated most strongly when personal causation of
detrimental effects is apparent. Another set of disengagement practices
operates by obscuring or distorting the relationship between actions and
the effects they cause. People will behave in ways they normally repudi-
ate if a legitimate authority sanctions their conduct and accepts responsi-
bility for its consequences (Milgram, 1974). Under conditions of displace-
ment of responsibility, people view their actions as springing from the
dictates of others rather than their being personally responsible for them.
Because they are not the actual agent of their actions, they are spared self-
prohibiting reactions. The deterrent power of self-sanctions is also weak-
ened when the link between conduct and its consequences is obscured by
diffusion of responsibility for culpable behavior. Through division of labor,
diffusion of decision making, and group action, people can behave detri-
mentally without any one person feeling personally responsible (Kelman
& Hamilton, 1989). People behave more injuriously under diffused
responsibility than when they hold themselves personally accountable for
what they do (Bandura, Underwood, & Fromson, 1975; Diener, 1977).
Additional ways of weakening self-deterring reactions operate
through disregard or distortion of the consequences of action. When people
pursue detrimental activities for personal gain or because of social
inducements, they avoid facing the harm they cause or they minimize it.
They readily recall the possible benefits of the behavior but are less able
to remember its harmful effects (Brock & Buss, 1962, 1964). In addition to
selective inattention and cognitive distortion of effects, the misrepresen-
tation may involve active efforts to discredit evidence of the harm they
cause. As long as the detrimental results of one’s conduct are ignored,
minimized, distorted, or disbelieved, there is little reason for self-censure
to be activated.
The final set of disengagement practices operates at the point of recipi-
ents of detrimental acts. The strength of self-evaluative reactions to detri-
mental conduct partly depends on how the perpetrators view the people
toward whom the behavior is directed. To perceive another as human
enhances empathetic or vicarious reactions through perceived similarity
(Bandura, 1992). As a result, it is difficult to mistreat humanized persons
without risking self-condemnation. Self-sanctions against cruel conduct
can be disengaged or blunted by dehumanization, which divests people of
human qualities or invests them with bestial qualities. Whereas dehu-
manization weakens self-restraints against cruel conduct (Diener, 1977;
Zimbardo, 1969), humanization fosters considerate, compassionate
behavior (Bandura et al., 1975).