Terrorists claim responsibility where conventional wrongdoers deny it

Evidence

Construal of responsibility in terrorism differs in several important ways from that in conventional forms of wrongdoing. Those who commit conventional misdeeds minimize, deny, or dispute the harmful effects in an effort to prove that they have done no harm. They intentionally obscure the link between themselves and the detrimental effects of their acts, making it difficult to know who is responsible. In contrast, those who carry out terrorist destruction for religious or humanistic social causes claim responsibility for the mayhem they cause and rejoice in its success. Some are even willing to take their own lives as an act of martyrdom to fulfill what they regard as a divine mandate. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2152

Categorization

• QUESTION: If moral disengagement normally requires obscuring the self-harm link, what mechanism lets those who openly claim responsibility still exonerate themselves? Bandura seems to pivot to mission construal and advantageous comparison.
• DEEPTHINKING: This inverts the standard moral-disengagement template (obscure the link) by showing a distinct route where responsibility is embraced yet neutralized — a genuinely paradigm-stretching observation about how moral conscience gets suspended.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2152
• XREF: connects to: Terrorists publicize rather than hide their harmful acts