[6] A brief summary is provided below, and more detailed description are given in the following section: One method of disengagement is portraying inhumane behavior as though it has a moral purpose in order to make it socially acceptable.
Moral justification is the first of a series of mechanisms suggested by Bandura that can induce people to bypass self-sanction and violate personal standards.
[10] Among these variants, it is found that justifications which appeal to personal ethical standards and collective social benefits are the most effective in shaping public opinion.
[1] With the help of intricate rephrasing, detrimental behaviour is made innocuous and acceptable, and people who are part of it are liberated from feeling sense of guilty.
[1] For example, "the massive destruction in Vietnam was minimized by portraying the American military intervention as saving the populace from Communist enslavement".
"[23] Albert Bandura suggested that applying the utilitarian calculus in specific situations is "quite slippery" because of the uncertainties that the future contains and the biases in human judgement.
[22] Bandura also argues that moral justification and advantageous comparison are the most effective "self-disinhibitors" because they eliminate self-censure and change the appreciation of the self in the service of harmful activities.
They play the role of an agent of moral disengagement and start to behave in ways they ordinarily disavow if an appropriate authority accepts responsibility for their behavior.
Personal liability for conduct drives people to view their actions as coming from authoritative figures under displaced responsibility.
Social interaction may curtail the propensity to escalate commitment to a defeated course of action by diffusing responsibility for the original decision and discouraging the arousal of intentions to justify previous behavior.
People willingly begin to recollect prior information regarding the potential benefits of the behavior but are less likely to recall the harmful effects it would cause to others.
[36] Apart from selective inattention and subjective cognitive distortion of effects, the misrepresentation of consequences may also involve persistent efforts to eliminate evidence of the damage they cause to others.
It is relatively easy to hurt others when the detrimental results of one's conduct are ignored, and when causal effects are not visible because they are remote from one's behaviour on the physical and mental level.
[37] Mechanized weapon systems and explosive devices that can lead to severe casualty but are controlled by someone at a distance pressing one button are suited examples of such depersonalized action.
Even if there exists a high level of personal responsibility in people, they will still execute detrimental behaviors when the harm they inflict on their victims is not realized.
[39] On the contrary, when people are aware of the suffering they cause, indirectly awakened distress and self-censure start to function and serve as self-restraining influences.
Nowadays, it is commonly seen that most organizations have a clear set of hierarchical chains where people in the upper level come up with plans and pass them down to their subordinates, known as executors, who then carry them out.
Disengagement of personal control normally exists among people who are situated between the top and the bottom in a hierarchical system because they can get away with the responsibility of formulating the plans, and they are not involved in executing the decisions.
[44] Through this process of delegitimization, dehumanization towards others is facilitated, which in turn leads to moral exclusion and the justification of immoral treatment and behavior towards individuals or a group of people.
[46] The denial of uniquely human attributes leads to a metaphor-based dehumanization process which associates the social outgroup to non-humans, comparing them to animals.
[48] Specifically, James R. Detert, Linda K. Treviño and Vicki L. Sweitzer[48] found that being more acutely aware of the needs and feelings of others prevents moral disengagement activities.
Moral agency is exercised in "particularized ways" depending on the conditions under which people's everyday life transactions are taking place.
To maintain effective control under the evolving conditions of life, it requires mastery of knowledge and skills which are only attainable through continued investment of time, effort, and resources.
Civilised life demands safeguards as an integral part of social systems to uphold moral personal control and "compassionate" conduct.
[54] Both of Adam Barsky's studies also empirically demonstrated a significant relation between moral disengagement and people's likelihood of unethical decision making, in organizational literature.
In the second study, Adam Barsky found empirical evidence that participation in goal-setting, that is, a joint decision making process, is positively related to deceptive behavior.
[53] "Perhaps most interesting, while moral justifications tended to increase in the reported incidents of unethical behavior, this was only true when employees did not feel that they had the opportunity to participate in setting their performance goals at work.
[11] McGraw concluded that moral justifications can be used deceptively by politicians to influence public opinion on controversies and to reinforce their own reputations without the fear of negative consequences.
The results supported their hypothesis that the more justification of army roadblocks by the soldiers, the higher level of cognitive, affective and behavioural adjustment they felt.
[1] But the role of moral disengagement in everyday situations – in which people routinely perform self-serving activities at injurious costs to others and the environment – is also receiving increased attention.