Reframing wrongdoing as respectable teamwork weakens self-restraint against it

Evidence

The specialized jargon of a legitimate enterprise can be misused to lend an aura of respectability to an illegitimate one. To add cover to their criminal activities, the Watergate burglars cloaked them in metaphors of admirable teamwork and sportsmanship. … Seeing oneself as a team player faithfully executing a game plan against a political foe will rouse weaker self-restraint of transgressive conduct than seeing oneself as a common burglar committing criminal acts. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 386

Categorization

• XREF: This is a concrete instance of how language relabels harmful conduct - it ties directly to the moral disengagement mechanism and how ordinary people legitimate supporting harmful policy.
• STORYSTEM: A fictional organization whose members genuinely believe their cover-jargon (‘team play’, ‘game plan’) and thus perform cruelties with clear consciences - the jargon is doing the moral work.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 386