Trivialising (psychology)

Trivialising (or downplaying) is a natural psychological reaction when an individual is caught either lying or committing a crime or social crime, they will attempt to trivialise (or downplay) whatever lie, crime or social crime they have committed.

Psychology
As an individual feels threatened when exposed, they will naturally alter or distort the events to seem more favourable than they actually are, and is a type of a mental self-defence mechanism. This often involves reducing or downplaying the effects of such an action to avoid the possibility of social reprisals.

For example, shoplifting is deemed a "victimless crime" because the definition of who is a victim is unclear. Trivialising individuals would claim it's the 'overly rich corporations' of which they steal from, as though akin to Robin Hood, which by itself is a type of cherry picking fallacy because they ignore any other effects which would make their crime look bad.

However contrary to this point, a store would be forced to replace the stock, and thus would have to pass on costs to the consumer, even having to pay for additional costs to implement security to prevent it from reoccurring (which means, in turn, either store prices go up, or worker cutbacks are made). In some cases, if there is a till shortfall (EG the till operator is scammed), the till operator often has to make up the loss and would be a direct victim (as though the money had been directly stolen from their pay packet).