As the men and women of the 117th Congress of the United States of American met to certify Joe Biden as the nation’s 46th President, a large group of rioters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, pushed past police barriers, and stormed the U.S. Capitol. Five people died, and the images of unchecked bedlam and violence shocked the world.
These rioters were not the first to engage in unlawful and unethical behavior in support of outgoing President Donald Trump. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for the man he once declared he would “take a bullet for.” He now recognizes that his “weakness was a blind loyalty to Donald Trump.” His loyalty led him to violate campaign finance laws and lie to Congress to cover up Trump’s “illicit acts,” as he described them.
Loyalty is often touted as a virtue. Defined as inherent partiality toward a group or person, expectations of loyal behavior include acting in the best interests of the group or person because it is the right thing to do.
Loyalty can prompt us to be better people, but it also has a dark side, as a group of researchers, led by Angus Hildreth of Cornell University, has found.
The Dark Side of Loyalty
In their studies, Hildreth and colleagues examined when loyalty spurred ethical behavior and when it actually compromised people’s ethics. They first discovered that groups that pledged loyalty to each other cheated less than groups that did not take the pledge. Loyalty pledges appeared to increase ethical behavior.
However, further studies revealed that loyalty could also have the opposite effect of increasing unethical behavior. For that to happen, two conditions had to be present.
First, competition among groups has to be high. If your group is competing against another strong team, you and your members are at risk of engaging in unethical behavior in support of your group. But competition alone is not enough. Second, the tipping point is a call to action from your group’s leader regarding what their loyalty demands and how they must demonstrate it. When both competition and a call for action are present, unethical behavior escalates among the most loyal.
Unfortunately, both those conditions were present on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters gathered to hear him speak. Unable to accept that he had lost the election, Trump directed his followers to march to the U.S. Capitol to “stop the steal.” Some responded by forcing their way into the building, terrorizing its occupants, defacing and stealing property, and inflicting violence.
When competition and a strong call to action stir up members of a loyal group, the desire to be fair, honest, and peaceful is overwhelmed. Strongly held values fade away, replaced by blind loyalty and a craving to win at all costs.
We become willing to cross our ethical red lines when we think it’s for the good of our group. Backing our group and its leaders can make us feel like a saint, allowing us to justify even the most immoral actions.
Blind loyalty can lead to senseless violence, gangland killings, and the types of craven political machinations we’ve seen too much of in recent days. It can and has fueled the worst movements and developments in human history.
Loyalty can become the force of ultimate destruction when it clashes and overwhelms more genuine virtues, such as honesty, fairness, and integrity. To avoid this fate, we need to move away from loyalty to people, parties, and groups and embrace loyalty to our bedrock principles: accountability, integrity, and honesty. In place of unquestioning obedience to unethical acts, we need principled behavior, critical thinking, and, when necessary, thoughtful objection.
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Storming of the U.S. Capitol: How Blind Loyalty Fuels The Unthinkable - Forbes
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