Moral disengagement downplays harm by relabeling it a lesser rule breach

Evidence

How can a person preserve positive self-regard while committing gross illegalities that jeopardize the integrity of the stock market and adversely affect the lives of countless people? Boesky seems to have achieved it by transforming the moral issue of inflicting harm into a lesser ethical violation of trader rules: “I think ‘immoral’ is probably the wrong word to use… . I prefer the word ‘unethical’” (Stewart, 1991). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1429

Categorization

• XREF: Could connect to vault claims about euphemistic relabeling — how harmful policy is softened through bureaucratic or technical language. — connects to: Minimizing victims’ emotional depth is a more radical moral disengagement strategy than empathy failure. — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 127
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1429