A/75/179 as true for manifestations of grand corruption in developing countries as it is for the pervasive collusion between powerful industries and all branches of Government in the leading industrial countries. In both cases, the affected governance systems have lost their capacity to effectively correct serious dysfunctions and disbalances resulting from self-interested decision-making and, therefore, to realize the “peaceful, just and sustainable societies” and “effective, accountable and inclusive institutions” envisaged in the Sustainable Development Goals. 33. In sum, unless it is effectively mitigated through objective, independent and transparent oversight and accountability mechanisms external to the system in question, the unconscious human tendency towards system-justification through wilful ignorance severely undermines the self-healing capacity of any Government, institution or group and creates an environment of unchecked power that is strongly conducive to systemic corruption, exploitation and abuse, including torture and ill-treatment. C. Denial of responsibility 34. Where the occurrence of torture or ill-treatment cannot be denied, both active participants and passive bystanders tend to experience strong emotions of guilt and shame. In order to avoid the ensuing moral dilemma, both perpetrators and bystanders tend to morally disengage through denial of responsibility, either by reference to their conformity with the predominant behaviour of the collective (diffusion of responsibility) or by blaming superiors, subordinates or external actors for the wrongful conduct (displacement of responsibility). 1. Diffusion of responsibility 35. Diffusion of responsibility does not deny the occurrence of torture or ill treatment, but it denies individual responsibility by pointing to collective responsibilities instead. Diffusion of responsibility is motivated primarily by the basic drives of self-affirmation (against guilt and shame) and self-preservation (against the risk of personal liability) and always aims to “hide” in the collective. 18 36. Diffusion of responsibility thrives on the unconscious tendency of humans towards group-based conformity, aligning their perception, reasoning and decisions with “their” social environment. Group-based conformity fosters a collective identity and consensus, by which individual responsibility for wrongdoing is seemingly transferred to, and subsumed by, the group as a whole. Fear and trauma may also foster extreme group-based conformity or “groupthink”, which has been implicated in the group-based normalization of torture. 19 37. A very common and widespread pattern of moral disengagement, diffusion responsibility is often adopted by active participants in collective acts of torture ill-treatment, such as police brutality during assemblies, gang rapes, severe cases mobbing, or persecution. Most typically, however, diffusion of responsibility of or of is __________________ 18 19 12/25 Eran Halperin and Noa Schori-Eyal, “Moral emotions in political decision making”, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, William Thompson, ed. (Oxford University Press, 2020); Monica Luci, Torture, Psychoanalysis, and Human Rights (Routledge, 2017). Albert Bandura, “Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities”, Personality and Social Psychology Review, vol. 3, No. 3 (August 1999), pp. 193–209; Janice Gibson and Mika Haritos-Fatouros, “The education of a torturer”, Psychology Today, vol. 20, No. 11 (November 1986), pp. 50–52 and 56–58; John Jost, Alison Ledgerwood and Curtis Hardin, “Shared reality, system justification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs”, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, vol. 2, No. 1 (January 2008), pp. 171–186; Jerrold Post and Lara Panis, “Crimes of obedience: ‘groupthink’ at Abu Ghraib”, International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, vol. 61, No. 1 (2011), pp. 48–66. 20-09728