The following are my notes from a paper entitled: Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities (Link to PDF) by Albert Bandura.
Thesis:
“Moral disengagement may center on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by:”
- (false) moral justification
- sanitizing language
- advantageous comparision
- disavowal of a sense of personal agency by 1diffusion of responcibility or 2displacement of responcibility
- disreguarding or minimizing the injurous effects of one’s actions
- attribution of blame to, and dehumanization of those who were victimized.
The structure of inhumanites is a “supportive network of legitimate enterprises run by otherwise considerate people.”
Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control, civilized life requires, in addition to human personal standards, safeguards build into social systems that uphold compassionate behavior and renouce cruelty.