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We describe how people can claim to be moral individuals while simultaneously engaging in immoral behavior. We take as our starting point moral disengagement strategies in which people selectively disengage from their harmful behavior. People may equate their harmful actions with worthy goals; soften bad actions to make them sound better; ignore or deny bad consequences; or blame others for bad outcomes. We argue that these and other strategies are cognitive devices to manage identity non-verification (“I am a good person, but I am doing a bad thing”) and the negative feelings that ensue. We discuss how different strategies are used depending upon the identities that are activated, and how these strategies evolve from a deliberate process that becomes habitual over time. We also discuss how these strategies might be tempered so that individuals become aware of the bad consequences of their behavior and take steps to alleviate them.

The goal of this chapter is to describe how the same act can be perceived as morally courageous, on the one hand, and as evil, on the other. The authors contend that both moral courage and moral disregard could be driven by two sides of the same process. Strong moral conviction that a stance is right or wrong (i.e., moral or immoral) may make it easier to disengage from normative standards to serve that belief, including harming others for a perceived higher moral purpose. In turn, the consequences of disengaging from normative standards could be perceived as heroic by like-minded observers or as morally bankrupt by non-like-minded observers (e.g., violence incited by the Israeli–Palestinian conflict may be perceived as heroic by observers who believe that it serves a higher moral purpose or as deeply immoral by people on the other side of the conflict who do not share that moral conviction).

This chapter reviews recent studies examining the link between employee envy and a host of organizational outcomes at the individual and group level, from poorer leader-member exchange, lower job satisfaction, less liking for co-workers, lower organization-based self-esteem, lower group performance, higher turnover, higher absence rates, higher social loafing, to increased performance in some instances. It shows that the role of envy in organizational life is complex. Some organizations can purposely encourage envy among employees because of its apparent motivational benefits. Whether this is good or bad, all things considered, has no pat answer. The chapter also summarizes findings on the link between envy and moral disengagement in organizational settings. It appears that people who are envious can commit harmful acts in a guilt-free manner by rationalizing their harmful behavior. This allows them to avoid personal responsibility for their actions. Envy seems to be especially conducive to both harmful acts and to moral disengagement.

Moral disengagement and self-deception precipitated by or supported in a research environment can weaken a researcher's understanding that he is breaking ethical rules. What elements of a work environment are conducive to ethical conduct in research? Current research misconduct regulations don't conceive of professional morality as a developmental process with a possibility of rehabilitation. Especially for trainees, mentorship in research ethics must set standards, review source data and actively involve trainees in solving real life ethical problems, to aid their development.

This chapter considers multiple theories of dehumanization. More specifically, this chapter aims to examine conflicting understandings of what causes dehumanization or what its function is. Some people think of dehumanization as the failure to recognize the humanity of others. Another popular but incorrect theory is that when people conceive of other people as less than human, this is just an alibi to excuse their cruel and destructive acts. Yet another misleading assumption is the claim that dehumanization promotes “moral disengagement”—a kind of distancing that casts others out from the “universe of moral obligation.” The chapter elaborates on the moral disengagement idea in particular, as it is not precisely correct in theory. After all, the inhibitions that dehumanization undermines are moral ones, and the violence that it unleashes often has an intensely moralistic tone.

The fundamental goal of Engagement Scholarship is straightforward: the creation of mutually beneficial partnerships between universities and local communities to solve pressing social issues. The fulfillment of this goal requires learning two complex sets of skills and knowledges:How to be aware of histories of exploitation and injustice, and the likelihood of repeating those patterns in the present;How to create structures of genuinely working together to solve problems for the long haul – not short term or ideologically driven, naïve, or inappropriate fixes.

This chapter analyzes the post-war trial case of the physician Dr. Franz Niedermoser, who murdered patients in the psychiatric hospital in Klagenfurt, Austria during the NS regime. It traces the ways in which Dr. Niedermoser, who was initially hesitant to carry out the murders in the hospital, gradually became morally disengaged, in the course of which he lost the capacity to feel guilty and critically reflect upon his actions, which arrested his capacity for embodied reflective judgment. It explains those mechanisms that made him move from initial hesitation at committing crimes, to later feeling no guilt for having committed them. It shows that to get a person to judge that he or she ought to help carry out crimes, it is first necessary to eliminate any feeling that this is wrong.

This chapter examines the cultural psychological processes that contribute to the delegitimization of Black victimhood in the United States. Drawing on a critical race psychology perspective that focuses on societal processes through which racism is maintained and reproduced, the authors examine the precariousness of claims of Black victimhood in the United States. The same mechanisms that maintain racist structures also delegitimize and deny Black victimhood. These processes include individualism and color-blind ideologies, victim blaming, the misrepresentation and dehumanization of Black victims, the assumption of White innocence and Whites’ moral disengagement from responsibility for racism, and claims of victimhood among Whites, especially in response to perceived threats of gains among minority groups. Thus, collective victimhood becomes precarious for Black Americans in that it is used as a tool of further oppression by others, instead of a source of support from third parties. The “benefits” of collective victimhood are not afforded to all groups.