Adopting or abandoning moral disengagement shifts later aggressive conduct.

Evidence

Longitudinal analysis of developmental changes in moral disengagement reveals four developmental trajectories accompanied by different levels of aggressive behavior (Paciello, Fida, Tramontano, Lupinetti, & Caprara, 2008). … Adolescents who repudiated moral-disengagement practices when younger and continued to do so into early adulthood refrained from harmful behavior. … By contrast, those who began as high moral disengagers and continued to suspend self-sanctions for wrongdoing experienced little guilt about it and were prone to aggressive and violent conduct. Their counterparts, who began as moral disengagers but later renounced such practices, were less inclined to behave aggressively as young adults. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 273

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Repeated violent acts progressively extinguish moral discomfort within a supportive group. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4153; Moral disengagement mediates glorification’s suppression of justice demands — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 57