An arti­cle in the Science sec­tion of the N.Y. Times reports on research con­duct­ed by psy­chol­o­gists at Stanford University on the effects of exe­cu­tions on prison staff. After inter­view­ing near­ly 250 prison staff mem­bers from three states, the researchers con­clud­ed that those who par­tic­i­pate in exe­cu­tion teams exhib­it high lev­els of ​“moral dis­en­gage­ment,” which one of the researchers described as the ​“abil­i­ty to selec­tive­ly engage and dis­en­gage our moral stan­dards.” The study found that the clos­er staff mem­bers are to the exe­cu­tion, the high­er their lev­el of dis­en­gage­ment goes. According to the study, moral dis­en­gage­ment pro­vides indi­vid­u­als with a buffer from their own con­sciences so that they can com­mit acts that their own moral char­ac­ter would oth­er­wise find unpalat­able. Members of the exe­cu­tion team were found to be far more like­ly than guards not on the team to agree that the inmates had lost impor­tant human qual­i­ties and to favor reli­gious sup­port for the sen­tence: ​“an eye for an eye.” The study was pub­lished last year in the jour­nal of Law and Human Behavior. (New York Times, February 7, 2006). See Resources.

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