Awareness of committed harm is the pivot toward rationalization and evil

Evidence

People do not usually engage in harmful conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality of their actions. Social and moral justifications sanctify harmful practices by investing them with honorable purposes. Righteous and worthy ends are used to justify harmful means. The moral imperative enables people to preserve their sense of self-worth even as they inflict harm on others. Sanctify is used as a generic term for diverse ways of justifying the rightness of harmful practices. It includes not only religious justifications but also ideological, social, economic, and constitutional forms. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 341 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Concealing past harms converts unknowing negligence into deliberate harm. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 4013; Harmdoers become permanently morally altered by their own rationalizations; Harmdoers rationalize by elevating science and derogating victims (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• People justify harmful acts to themselves before committing them #complicates (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 341