Industries neutralize moral concerns by disputing evidence of harm rather than changing practices
Evidence
Moral self-sanctions are contingent on evidence that one’s activities cause harm. Neutralizing the moral predicament roused by reported adverse effects requires challenging scientific findings and managing how those findings are interpreted and presented to the general public. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 870
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to tobacco industry’s manufacturing of doubt against science, and to the systemic moral disengagement machinery Bandura is mapping throughout this book.
- SEED: Could be the thesis for an essay on the recurring structure of ‘manufactured ignorance’ across industries — broadcast violence, tobacco, fossil fuels, sugar.
Related
- Disengaging self-sanctions requires contesting evidence of harm rather than denying the act (similarity 0.87)
- Industries justify harmful products by magnifying their psychological benefits (similarity 0.86)
- Tobacco firms rebutted passive-smoking claims by attacking the science (similarity 0.85)
- Industry shifted blame to workers’ own smoking to exonerate a carcinogen (similarity 0.84)
- Industries reframe disputes to keep harm out of personal responsibility (similarity 0.84)
- Industries dispute harm by fabricating controversy and manipulating evidence thresholds (similarity 0.84)
- Tobacco firms ridiculed science showing tobacco harms to discredit it (similarity 0.84)
- Denying that one’s product causes harm removes the basis for any blame (similarity 0.82)
- Ignoring or discrediting harm evidence disables self-censure and motivates no change (similarity 0.82)
- Manufacturing public doubt about evidence is a deliberate corporate strategy for harm denial (similarity 0.81)
- Broadcast industry attacked researchers whose findings threatened advertising profits (similarity 0.80)
- Ignoring, minimizing, or discrediting evidence of harm preemptively disables moral self-censure. (similarity 0.80)
- Industries justify harmful products by recasting product regulation as an attack on constitutional rights (similarity 0.80)
- Industries outsource research to shift moral accountability to proxy agents (similarity 0.80)
- Willful ignorance of product misuse lets industries deny responsibility for harm. (similarity 0.79)