When does self‐interest distort moral belief?

In this paper, I attack the widely shared idea that self-interest necessarily distorts moral belief-formation. I then offer a principle which can help us to sort cases in which self-interest distorts moral belief from cases in which it does not. As it turns out, we cannot determine whether such distortion has occurred from the armchair, rather, we must inquire into mechanisms of social power and advantage before declaring that some moral position is distorted by self-interest