Supplemental material: Examples of moral disengagement identified by country experts
Moral disengagement
1Country Examples (quotes by experts)
Moral, economic or socialjustification converts harmful conduct into beneficial conduct by sanctifying
“harmful means to achieve worthy ends”.
Hungary “For most of the ordinary Hungarian (businessman) what is important is who knows whom, if he or she knows the right person in the right place. Then he can get things done (…) and their perception is that that has been happening in Hungary for many, many years, for hundreds of years and so and that's the case now.” (Expert #2)
North Macedonia
“In modern Macedonia, I would say corruption is everywhere (…) Basically, people do not perceive it as a very negative thing, mainly because the country is very small, very limited resources and very limited (in terms of the number of) people.” (Expert #4)
Slovenia “I worked my ass off” to say in the slang “and I deserve this.” Nobody else deserves it. And I did it all by myself.” (Expert #7) Euphemistic labelling changes
harmful into beneficial through
“sanitizing and convoluted language”, and “specialized jargon”.
Hungary Expert #1 reporting that businesses and individuals consider tax evasion “ a smarter action”, “common play” and “a trick against the state”.
North Macedonia
“People are basically kind of fighting to get some good services, good treatments (…) in education, in public health services etc., so in many cases, corruption, it’s simply in a way voluntarily because people are trying to bribe the officials, the doctors, the professors, in order to get some better treatment or in order to get the service at all.” (Expert #5)
Slovenia “It's part of the culture, you will always try to find a way for yourself to get it around the rules or at least trying to try to compete the way for you to be better for yourself.” (Expert #8 describing how everyone tries to get a ticket for free to see a live sports match)
Advantageous comparison is self- exoneration by cloaking a behavior so that the lesser of two evils is acceptable and even morally right.
Hungary “The majority of Hungarians still consider themselves belonging to the to Europe to European civilization. So, at least in abstract terms, do not want to be engaged with the East, with Russia.” (Expert #2)
Slovenia “(Slovenians) we are also highly regarded in comparison to others, especially ex-Yugoslavian or Eastern European nations, like Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, especially Hungary.” (Expert #8)
Displacement of responsibility obscures or minimizes one’s agentic role by deferring responsibility to an authority.
Hungary “They (the people) will just keep doing corrupt things and because they have the government officials and others, like business leaders, engaging in these dirty practices, it's okay for them to also do whatever they can because everybody is just doing dirty stuff.” (Expert #1) North
Macedonia
On the extracting role of institutions and government: “But the impression among many businesses, is that a lot of these institutional barriers exist precisely with the goal to extract money” (Expert #6).
Slovenia “Slovenians would say if someone or if those who are the top are cheating, why wouldn't we be, and so on and so forth. So, this would be a normal saying here. Why would I pay the taxes when all the others don’t as well? It's just normal.” (Expert #7)
Diffusion of responsibility diminishes one’s personal responsibility by invoking group decision-making, division of labor and collective action.
Hungary “They (…) add that it happens everywhere like this. So, they cannot imagine that in other places, in other countries it happens otherwise, and even I get this, (…) opinion several times from the businesses as well.” (Expert #1)
North Macedonia
“(T)he problem is, again, this is probably not something that's centrally managed or planned or controlled. It's probably very kind of decentralized practice. Because, you know, I mean every corrupt officer, or every corrupt institution works for itself” (Expert #6).
Denial of consequences is inattention to harmful effects by minimizing harm, discrediting evidence of harm and keeping harmful effects out of sight.
Hungary Tax evasion: “Nobody, thinks that it's not good because they won't get pension later or something. It's a short-term thinking.” (Expert #1) Slovenia “So the person says, 'Yeah I stole, I don't know, hundred thousand from the state budget', there is no direct consequence, which you could
pinpoint to that person.” (Expert #8) Attribution of blame is self-
exoneration by blaming the adversary, or circumstances.
Hungary “Most of (the) people want to cheat the state. And this is, this might be very historical because Hungary was occupied, (…) for many, many years was occupied by foreign powers.” (Expert #1)
North Macedonia
“Macedonia used to be part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, which was In the sense of government and organization of the society, very, very different from the Western societies and that time. And because the society was very corrupted. Unfortunately, those habits stayed until today.” (Expert #5)
