Moral blindness is a temporary inability to see the ethical aspects of decisions. It allows ordinary people to commit terrible acts under authority without understanding the ethical weight.
Hannah Arendt covered the trial for The New Yorker and coined the phrase banality of evil during the proceedings. She observed that Eichmann showed no remorse nor did he accept responsibility while claiming to have done what he was told to do.
Stanley Milgram conducted obedience studies between 1961 and 1962 to answer questions about following orders. Sixty-five percent of subjects pulled a switch that would administer the maximum of 450 volts.
James Rest published his Four Component Model of Morality in 1982 identifying four distinct stages. These stages include moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and moral implementation.
Ethical fading describes how concerns fade during decision making while ethical erosion refers to the gradual decline of ethics over time. Blind spots involve overestimating ability to act ethically within these frameworks.