Context, Meaning and Agency in Moral Disengagement: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

Moral disengagement research examines how people selectively disengage their moral self- regulation, thus permitting unethical behavior without experiencing moral self-reprehension. The moral disengagement framework–first articulated by Bandura (1986, 1990, 1991a, 1999a, 2002)–has generated research predicting various types of unethical behaviors. However, the literature generally treats moral disengagement as an individual difference which, we argue, “freezes” what Bandura argued should be understood as a process that develops over time. In this article, we aim to broaden our understanding of moral disengagement by offering a symbolic interactionist perspective that emphasizes the role of collective action, agency, and social objects in the emergence, maintenance, and dissipation of moral disengagement. Doing so not only better fulfills Bandura’s conception of moral disengagement as involving reciprocal relationships of cognitive and social influences, but also allows us to explore how moral disengagemen...