People can suspend moral standards only for specific harmful activities while keeping them elsewhere.

Evidence

Moral disengagement does not alter moral standards. Rather, it provides the means for those who morally disengage to circumvent moral standards in ways that strip morality from harmful behavior and their responsibility for it. However, in other aspects of their lives, they adhere to their moral standards. It is the selective suspension of morality for harmful activities that enables people to retain their positive self-regard while doing harm. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 63

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Establishes the core definition of moral disengagement as selective, domain-specific suspension rather than wholesale abandonment of morality.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how people compartmentalize ethics across domains (work vs. home, online vs. offline) — the selective-suspension pattern as a universal human capacity.

Related

• People retain their moral standards while selectively suspending them for harm. (similarity 0.91)
• People abandon moral conduct without abandoning moral standards (similarity 0.87)
• Moral disengagement is how individuals neutralize threats to the moral self (similarity 0.84)
• Moral standards vary by setting and allow selective application (similarity 0.84)
• Moral disengagement is common in ordinary daily life, not just atrocities (similarity 0.83)
• Self-regard invested in standards, not the standards themselves, drives moral conduct. (similarity 0.82)
• Acquired moral standards do not regulate conduct unceasingly (similarity 0.81)
• Which harmful acts count as moral matters is socially negotiable, enabling exclusion. (similarity 0.81)
• People disengage moral self-sanctions through euphemism, justification, and dehumanization (similarity 0.80)
• People routinely compromise their moral standards when facing social predicaments. (similarity 0.80)
• People routinely use psychosocial means to circumvent their moral principles (similarity 0.80)
• Social factors determine which harmful acts count as moral violations (similarity 0.80)
• Disengaging self-sanctions requires contesting evidence of harm rather than denying the act (similarity 0.80)
• Moral self-censure strength depends on how perpetrators regard their victims. (similarity 0.80)
• Moral disengagement mechanisms operate at four distinct sites in self-regulation (similarity 0.80)