Moral disengagement is how individuals neutralize threats to the moral self

Evidence

I devote this chapter to a discussion, from a social psychological perspective, of what people do when they are confronted with information that threatens the image of their group, and thus the self. I begin by discussing the concept of social identity and how they link the individual and the group. I then go on to discuss the concept of moral disengagement, which I define as the process through which individuals attenuate or eliminate a threat to their moral self. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2086

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clean, useful definition of moral disengagement as self-threat attenuation rather than outright denial.