Children master simpler blame-shifting disengagement before more cognitively-demanding forms

Evidence

Construing injurious behavior as serving worthy purposes, disowning responsibility for harmful effects by fixing the blame on others, and devaluing those who are maltreated are the most widely used modes of self-exoneration. Disguising censurable activities in sanitizing and convoluted language or rendering them benign by favorable comparison with worse conduct requires higher cognitive skills. Hence, children use these strategies less often. By late adolescence, children have learned the full array of disengagement practices. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 256

Categorization

• XREF: Cognitive hierarchy of disengagement mechanisms echoes the reader’s curated work on how institutions scale with cognitive/informational demands.