Moral Bubble Effect: Violent and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Violence Lead to Disregard the Inflicted Harm

Abstract

To undertake a serious investigation of violence calls for a discrete amount of courage and sincerity: as human beings we can wishfully ignore our own violence, thanks to a kind of “embubblement” I am illustrating in this article. I would also like to offer to the attention of researchers in sociology, psychology, and psychiatry the main features of the situations in which the awareness of human violent acts is in question, as indicated in the subtitle “Violent and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Violence Lead to Disregard the Inflicted Harm”. In these cases a process of what can be called “autoimmunity” is at play. I contend the concept of moral bubble can provide an integrated and unified perspective able to interpret in a novel way many situations in which morality and violence are intertwined.