Moral Disengagement

Moral disengagement describes the processes we use to convince ourselves, without changing our moral standards, that our actions which violate those standards are permissible. Psychologist Albert Bandura defined four categories of mechanisms we commonly use to disengage from our moral responsibilities.

Behavioral

We convince ourselves that harmful behavior is good behavior by using moral, social, or economic justifications. For example we use a moral justification: “My god demands that I kill the heathens” (moral); or a social justification: “Immigration threatens our nation’s culture” (social); or an economic justification: “CEOs make all the money” (economic).

We may also disguise our harmful acts using euphemistic language, such as calling innocent citizens “collateral damage” in war. Or, we may justify our harmful acts by using advantageous comparisons like, “My product kills people, but not as many as cigarettes do.”

Agency

We disengage morally when we displace our moral responsibility or diffuse it. We hold someone else, or a group, responsible for our transgressions. For example, we use displacement: “Silly environmental regulations forced us to hide our violations”; or diffusion: “It wasn’t my idea… We all said OK”.

Effects

When we disregard, distort, or deny the effects of our actions, we are also practicing moral disengagement. For example, we disregard: “Look at all the information we got from torturing him”; or we distort: “I don’t care what the statistics say, we saved jobs”; or we deny: “A little sexual banter never hurt anyone”.

Victim

When we dehumanize or blame the victim, rather than focus on our own behavior, we are also practicing moral disengagement. For example, we dehumanize: “Our enemies are nothing but animals”: or blame: “That guy was so dumb he deserved to be ripped off”.

Research shows that people with a strong moral identity or higher empathy are less likely to use these techniques to rationalize harm. But many people have used moral disengagement to justify major moral wrongs like fraud, torture, and murder. So, regardless of the impact, we must all guard against the subtle appeal of moral disengagements.