Moral disengagement and the college admissions scandal

Several weeks ago, I published an article about moral disengagement after the missed pass interference call in the New Orleans Saints-L.A. Rams game effectively gave the Rams a trip to the Super Bowl.

This notion of moral disengagement came back to me when I heard about the college admissions scandal. As a fan of Lori Loughlin, I am having a hard time reconciling her on screen persona with the alleged felonious actions she and her husband took to obtain admission into USC for their two children.

Like many others, I am asking myself why did the 50 or so parents take the actions that are being labelled as conspiracy to commit fraud? The only answer I can come up with is the "slippery slope" of ethics or what has been called moral disengagement.

As noted in Albert Bandura's "Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves" (Worth Publishers, New York, 2016), moral disengagement refers to eight interrelated cognitive mechanisms that allow us to sidestep our internalized moral standards and behave immorally without feeling attendant distress. These eight mechanisms include: moral justification, euphemistic labelling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, dehumanization and moral muteness.

Moral Justification: College educations are an imperative these days. The purpose was honorable: to ensure that the children obtained good college educations. They wanted what every parent wants for their child: for the child to have a "better" life than they did. The social justification is that the parents involved are all well known and to "save face" with society, it is imperative that their children go to "elite" schools. (Indeed, one parent even dissed Arizona State University, claiming that his child must go to a better school than that one.)

Euphemistic Language: The children obtained admission by a "side door" or even a "back door," rather than using the true means; bribery and cheating.

Advantageous Comparison: The parents compared their behavior with something much worse. They probably thought if they did not help their children gain admission to college, the result to their children and to their own reputations will be much worse. To have a child that could not get into a "decent" college on his or her own merit would be horrendous and the parent would be unable to face society etc.

Displacement of Responsibility: Most likely, the parents are placing the blame on William Singer, the person who masterminded the admissions scandal. The parents probably minimized their role in causing the harm, by thinking that they were simply doing what Mr. Singer suggested they do to insure that their children obtained a good college education at an "elite" school, thereby setting up the child with advantages upon entry into the real world.

Diffusion of Responsibility: Most likely, the parents believe that many other people are responsible for this fiasco; not only Singer, but the other defendants who took the SAT and ACT tests for their children, the test administrators who helped insure that the scores would be high enough, the coaches who were bribed, the persons who photoshopped the pictures of the purported athletes and all the others who assisted in the "side door" entry into college for these kids. By diffusing responsibility onto such a large group of active players,, the parents can minimize personal responsibility.

Dehumanization: The "victims" are large universities: UCLA, USC, Stanford, Yale, Wake Forest, Georgetown, University of Texas at Austin and University of San Diego.

Moral Muteness: This occurs when people witness unethical behavior and choose not to do anything about it; they look the other way. Clearly, all those involved were witnessing the others engage in unethical behavior and not only did they fail to say or do anything about it, they did the opposite by engaging in it themselves.

On a smaller scale, I find the notion of moral disengagement intriguing. Unquestionably, parties in a lawsuit use one or more of these cognitive mechanisms to explain their behavior to the mediator. They will come up with moral justifications, euphemistic language, diffusion of responsibility or displacement of responsibility to explain their stance on the issue. With the knowledge of what is going on, one can be better equipped to respond and work with the parties to reach a resolution in spite of moral disengagement.