Moral disengagement is the most common justification category among job-seeking CS students rationalizing ethically concerning employment choices¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · qualitative r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2031: baselines and conditions change

Subclaims¶

q2 i? 18% of respondents' explanations were classified as moral disengagement, the most common category, often via minimization of harm (e.g., on privacy). → Mohamed Abdalla 2026

Evidence¶

Mohamed Abdalla 2026¶

Mohamed Abdalla, Sahar Abdalla, Alicia Cappello, Kyrie Dowling, Danaé Metaxa, David G. Widder, Catherine Stinson. (2026). Cost-of-Ethics Crisis: Beliefs, Decisions, and Justifications in the Job Searches of Computer Science Students in Canada and the United States. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09680 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2605.09680

q2 · i? · qualitative · r2

Open qualitative card sort of free-text survey responses by two coders with consensus negotiation; the article reports "The most common responses (18% of respondents) were classified as “moral disengagement”". Minimization of harm was particularly common on privacy.

"The most common responses (18% of respondents) were classified as “moral disengagement” – a process where to reduce feelings of guilt and to maintain a positive moral self-image, individuals disassociate their moral standards from their actions."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Most surveyed job-seeking CS students applied to at least one Big Tech company, with significant subgroup differences in application rates — related
• Job-seeking CS students rank ethical concerns last among job considerations, below remuneration, location, work-life balance, and workplace culture — related
• Respondents overestimate apathy in their field: for most ethical issues, students' own concern exceeds the concern they perceive among CS peers — related
• Only 55% of concerned respondents who had applied to a company engaged in concerning activities said the knowledge made them less likely to apply — related
• Students' moral rationalizations of AI use are typically post hoc and often internally inconsistent — related