Contrasting one’s harms against worse ones makes harmful acts seem righteous.

Evidence

Exploiting the contrast principle can make even highly detrimental activities seem righteous. Skillful framing of an issue in an advantageous comparison can make the lesser of two evils not only acceptable but even morally right. As we have seen, terrorists depict their deeds as acts of selfless martyrdom by comparing them with cruelties that others have inflicted on the people with whom they identify. The more flagrantly the inhumanities are contrasted, the more likely it is that one’s own destructive conduct will appear benevolent and righteous. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 390

How the self and others view human behavior is colored by what it is compared against. Self-exoneration by advantageous comparison with more flagrant inhumanities is a third mechanism for cloaking behavior in an aura of benevolence. Exploiting the contrast principle can make even highly detrimental activities seem righteous. Skillful framing of an issue in an advantageous comparison can make the lesser of two evils not only acceptable but even morally right. As we have seen, terrorists depict their deeds as acts of selfless martyrdom by comparing them with cruelties that others have inflicted on the people with whom they identify. The more flagrantly the inhumanities are contrasted, the more likely it is that one’s own destructive conduct will appear benevolent and righteous. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 390

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the moral disengagement theme; connects to framing/reframing in propaganda studies and the earlier chapters’ mechanisms.
• DEFINE: Pins down the third disengagement mechanism, ‘advantageous comparison,’ as distinct from euphemistic labeling and moral justification.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 390