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This measure assesses cognitive mechanisms that allow individuals to justify or minimize the personal significance of behavior that conflicts with internal moral standards. The Moral Disengagement Scale (MD-24) is typically used to characterize patterns of moral self-regulation relevant to ethically questionable, aggressive, or harmful conduct.
It consists of 24 items and is usually completed in about 5 minutes. Respondents rate agreement with statements reflecting common disengagement processes (e.g., moral justification, displacement or diffusion of responsibility, minimizing consequences, and devaluing or blaming victims), supporting interpretation of relative tendencies across mechanisms.
In clinical, forensic, organizational, and research settings, the Moral Disengagement Scale (MD-24) may inform case formulation or risk-related hypotheses by identifying how a person may cognitively distance actions from moral principles. Results should be integrated with collateral information and other assessment data rather than used as a standalone indicator of behavior or intent.