The Assassination of a CEO

Why some celebrate the pain of the powerful

At 6am in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was assassinated on his way to an annual investor conference. He had worked at United since 2004 and served in the CEO role for the past 3 years. The response on social media was mostly celebratory–surprising given that murder is so obviously wrong.

Figures 1-2. Many social media reactions surrounding Thompson’s death have been critiqued for being celebratory rather than somber.

Why are so many people (especially liberals) so happy that Thompson was killed—despite the obvious harm of murder? Frequent readers of this Substack know that our moral minds condemn acts based on how harmful acts seem. And that’s the key: to many, Thompson’s murder doesn’t seem that harmful. 

Two facts of our moral psychology explain why progressives fail to see Thompson’s murder as harmful. First, liberals fail to see the powerful—like CEOs—as relatively capable of suffering. The second reason is moral typecasting, our tendency to see people as either villains or victims. Those who celebrate Thompson’s murder see him as a villain, which further makes him not a victim. 

Who is Especially Vulnerable to Victimization? 

We get most morally outraged when people harm the vulnerable, like when people abuse harmless puppies, or exploit innocent children. But although we all agree that pets and kids are especially vulnerable to harm, how vulnerable is a coral reef, or an undocumented immigrant, or a CEO? It turns out that the vulnerability of these targets is a perception that varies widely across politics.

To assess people’s assumptions of vulnerability (AoVs), our lab ran eight studies (currently under peer review). We presented people with different targets and asked them to rate how much they were especially vulnerable. These were the questions: 

1. [This target] is especially vulnerable to being harmed. 

2. [This target] is especially vulnerable to mistreatment.

3. [This target] is especially vulnerable to victimization.

The targets were drawn from four clusters: the Environment (e.g., coral reefs), the Othered (e.g., undocumented immigrants), the Divine (e.g., God)...and most important for understanding reactions to Thompson’s murder, the Powerful, a category that included state troopers, authority figures, and corporate leaders, like CEOs.

So the question is, how much are CEOs especially vulnerable to mistreatment or victimization?

There are big political differences in how people answer this question. Liberals saw powerful CEOs to be especially invulnerable to victimization, while conservatives saw CEOs as more average in their vulnerability.

Figure 3. Liberals and conservatives view different groups as especially vulnerable to being harmed, mistreated, and victimized. From Womick et al., 2024.

Beyond individual ratings, liberals tend to split the world into the invulnerable oppressors (the red and blue lines on the bottom left) versus the vulnerable oppressed (the green and yellow lines in the top left), while conservatives see most targets as being relatively equal in their vulnerability to harm. 

These results explain different reactions to Thompson’s murder: conservatives see a man victimized, liberals see an oppressor eliminated. 

Differing assumptions of vulnerability provides the spark of left-right disagreement on this issue. Moral typecasting fans the flames of this disagreement even higher.

Moral Typecasting: Either Villains Or Victims

Typecasting actors is something we all do. If you see Daniel Radcliffe, your first thought is “Harry Potter” and it’s weird to think of him playing other roles. We also typecast people into enduring moral roles, seeing them as either villains (cruel and ruthless predators) or as victims (helpless and innocent sufferers). Our tendency to see someone as either a villain or a victim means that when someone seems like a perpetrator, we deny that they might suffer.

In graduate school, Kurt conducted a study to test typecasting. People rated how much various people would suffer if injured and how evil they were (how much blame they deserved). Targets included obvious villains like Hitler, the serial killer Ted Bundy, and the al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. Participants also rated people generally seen as vulnerable victims, like orphans, victims of date rape, and people with Down’s syndrome. (For variety, there were neutral targets and some random famous people too).

The results were clear: villains were seen as insensitive to pain (and victims were seen incapable of earning blame). In other words, if someone is seen as causing pain to others, then people think they can’t feel pain. 

Figure 4. People who seem more like villains (higher on moral blame) are seen as less capable of feeling pain (lower on victimhood). From Gray & Wegner, 2009.

Moral typecasting means that if you’re seen as evil, people feel little sympathy for your suffering—or your death. When convicted serial killers or pedophiles are killed in prison, people seldom think about whether those felons were afraid as they died. Instead, they think “good.”

They may not be convicted killers, but CEOs are perceived to profit off the suffering of others—especially by progressives. This makes them villains, which makes them seem like not victims. 

Remember OceanGate, the Titanic-bound submarine whose implosion killed five people? People seemed callous about their deaths, with one news station using an “oxygen countdown clock” ticking down to their impending demise. Four out of the five on board were CEOs, leading the public to think “you get what you get” rather than sympathizing with them and their families.

Figure 5. In 2023, OceanGate’s submersible ship was lost and deemed imploded on a trip down to view the Titanic's remains. Four out of the five passengers were CEOs, including the company’s own leader. Source: The Guardian

When we look at Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, it’s clear that most people have “typecast” him as a villain. American health insurance companies are seen as cruel, willing to watch someone die to save shareholders a few dollars. In the wake of Thompson’s murder, many on social media have shared stories of when United refused to fund their health bills—emphasizing its CEO’s villainy and his lack of vulnerability.

Figures 6-7. Stories of being victimized by UnitedHealthcare frame their CEO as a villain, not a victim.

In sum, the apparent glee at a CEO’s assassination is fueled by (at least) two important psychological phenomena:

1. Assumptions of Vulnerability: Liberals (unlike conservatives) view corporate leaders as relatively invulnerable to suffering.

2. Moral Typecasting: When someone seems like a villain (like healthcare insurance CEOs), they are not seen as victims.

Of course, we argue strongly against violence in any context, but looking at our moral psychology can help us understand why people might condone harm. In fact, if you are someone who sees the murder of Thompson as both 1) not harmful and as 2) helpful by spurring healthcare insurance CEOs to treat their customers better (as people suggest on social media), you might be someone who gives an assassin praise rather than blame.