Moral Blindness

Also referred to as Ethical Blindness, related to but not to be confused with Moral Blind Spots and Moral Myopia.

Moral blindness is defined as the temporary inability to see the unethical side of a certain context or situation. People who possess moral reasoning abilities are unable to see reason temporarily due to situational or other factors and thus behave in ways counter to their actual moral values and principles. The idea of moral blindness usually requires the following: people deviate from their intrinsic moral beliefs and this deviation is temporary and unconscious i.e. people are unaware at the time of their unethical behaviour^[1][2].

Interest in the idea of moral blindness increased after Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil ^[3] which focussed on Adolf Eichmann, a German-Austrian Nazi solider who was responsible for deportation of Jews to extermination camps and thus played a major role in the Holocaust.^[4]

The ideas of moral blindness and the

Subsequent research has looked at moral blindness in contexts beyond war crimes and genocide. The idea has been expanded to study people's behaviour in areas as diverse as organisational behavior and mental health to name a few.

Origins & Early Theories

The origins of moral blindness lie in philosophy and can be traced to ancient Greek philosophers such as

Moral reasoning has been studied jointly across philosophy and psychology with empirical studies of morality going back to the 1890s. The focus on a normative approach to moral behaviour led to research focus on the cognitive and developmental context. Piaget put forth his prominent theory of cognitive development in 1936 which Kohlberg developed upon to come up with the three stages of moral development in 1958^[12]. Later, in 1982, James Rest published his influential Four Component Model of Morality (FCM) where he identified four distinct stages from which immoral behaviour could arise: moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and moral implementation ^[11] . This model was meant to convey the complexity behind moral behaviour: competence in one stage did not imply competence in another with the result that immoral behaviour could be a consequence of failure at any stage.^[13] The above cognitive focus was found to be in contrast to some of the observed behavior. The field of behavioral ethics eventually emerged to study how people actually behaved in situations of moral dilemma.

Later Theoretical & Experimental Research

A major driver behind more modern research on moral blindness is purported to be post

In his famous obedience studies in 1961-62, Milgram had subjects administer electric shocks to a confederate. These studies had been designed to answer questions such as: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" To most people's surprise then, results showed that 65% of the subjects from the original study went ahead to administer the maximum of 450 volts. ^[16][17]

Later in 1971, ZImbardo in his infamous Stanford Prison Experiment studied showed how “good people behave in pathological ways that are alien to their nature"”^[1]. Male undergraduate students at Stanford were assigned to be guards or prisoners in a simulated prison situation to study how far they would go to internalise their roles and obey external orders with shocking results.^[18]

Post these findings, researchers began to study moral agency, its exercise and drivers of moral blindness. In his research, Bandura argued that moral disengagement could arise out of various forces (individual, situational or institutional) and alongwith mechanisms such as diffusion of responsibility and disconnected division of tasks could lead to immoral behaviour ^[19][20][21].

More recent research has led to the development of the concept of 'bounded ethicality" - the idea that people can be unintentionally unethical when it comes to their behaviour as well as judging others' behaviour; something they may realise only on further reflection. ^[22][23]. Studies on individual unethicality have also looked at the role of social norms and as well as how we view others' unethical behaviour. ^[24][25]

Applications & Related Ideas

Moral blindness has been applied to a range of domains beyond war crimes, politics and administration. A major area of application has been in the field of management and organisational behaviour with research looking at a wide range of topics such as corporate transgressions, business ethics and moral disengagement at work ^[26][27]. Law and justice is another area where moral blindness, especially when it comes to lawyers, is seen as a concern.^[28][29] Some research has also referred to psychopathy being a specific kind of moral blindness although the findings are not conclusive^[30].

The field has also been expanded to study broader ideas such as moral blind spots (overestimating ability to act ethically)^[31], ethical erosion (gradual decline of ethics over time)^[25], and ethical fading (when ethical concerns around a situation 'fade' during decision making)^[32].

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