Moral Disengagement

Mechanism

Moral justification: Framing harmful or morally wrong acts in the service of greater good

Euphemistic labelling: Using pleasant language to rename harmful or ethically wrong acts to make them appear more benign

Advantageous comparison: uses the contrast between a behavior and an even more reprehensible behavior to make the former seem more innocuous

Distortion of consequences: minimizing, ignoring, or distorting the seriousness of the effects of ones action

Dehumanization: framing the victims ones action as unworthy of moral regard and underserving of basic human consideration

Displacement of responsibility: attributing the responsibility for ones action to authority figures

Diffusion of responsibility: dispersing responsibility for ones action across members of a group or to the system in which one finds onself

Attribution of blame: assigning responsibility for ones action to the victim themselves

Mechanism

How the Weston’s used the mechanism

Moral justification: Framing harmful or morally wrong acts in the service of greater good

Chris was doing this for the greater good of his family

To assuage guilt about all the prior moves

To provide  a way for Alison to have a professional life again

To build a foundation for him to start a business and be less stresses and be available to family

Euphemistic labelling: Using pleasant language to rename harmful or ethically wrong acts to make them appear more benign

Chris said “I am in a big job and I am going to get it done however I can. This characterization did not accurately reflect what was going on

Advantageous comparison: uses the contrast between a behavior and an even more reprehensible behavior to make the former seem more innocuous

It is not going to go on forever

It was not any worse than the dodgy things the company itself engaged in

The overbilling was small compared to the good things Chris did for the company improving labour relations and instituting gain sharing

Distortion of consequences: minimizing, ignoring, or distorting the seriousness of the effects of ones action

These was work done for each of the invoices

This represented a very minor part of Chris job and responsibilities

It was not stealing; it was simply stretching out the value of invoices

Dehumanization: framing the victims ones action as unworthy of moral regard and underserving of basic human consideration

Chris felt he worked for a company without a moral code and therefore acting within it in a way that was ethically problematic was acceptable

Displacement of responsibility: attributing the responsibility for ones action to authority figures

Alison allowed Chris to make calls on what the invoices should be, and if Chris said he had received value, so be it, thought to live.

When Alison asked questions about whether what they were doing was OK, she asked Chris (who was a faulty “accountability partner”

Diffusion of responsibility: dispersing responsibility for ones action across members of a group or to the system in which one finds onself

Chris saw other doing the same thing (hiring family members)

Chris worked for a family owned business, so working with ones family was acceptable

Attribution of blame: assigning responsibility for ones action to the victim themselves

Chris corporate life had required tremendous sacrifices and this was payback for those actions

The organization Chris worked for was crappy, “so the least they can do is allow him to have this situation in place”