Wrongdoers reframe immoral acts as mere rule violations to preserve self-regard

Evidence

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

• DEFINE: The immoral/unethical distinction is the mechanism of moral disengagement in action: demoting a moral harm to a technical-transgression framing.
• XREF: connects to: Official injustice compounds wrongdoing when judges dehumanize victims as primitive. — Bernhard Leidner et al., Ingroup Glorification, Moral…, 29