Cognitive processing of moral and social judgements: A comparison of offenders, students, and control participants

Abstract

Examining cognitive processes related to offenders' moral and social judgements is important in order to better understand their criminal behaviour. In the present study, 30 offenders, 30 students, and 24 control participants were administered the moral-conventional judgements computer task, which requires responding under strict time constraints. Participants read scenarios and were asked to judge whether the act was acceptable or unacceptable when rules were either assumed or removed. Additionally, participants completed an executive function (EF) task in order to examine the relation between EF and moral and social judgements. The findings revealed that, as expected, controls and students had faster reaction times (RTs) and a higher percentage of normative judgements than offenders. Additionally, offenders had a low percentage of normative judgements, particularly in the conventional rule removed condition. Finally, RTs of moral and conventional judgements in most conditions were related to EF among students but not controls or offenders. We conclude that offenders, as compared to controls and students, may rely more on rule-oriented responding and may rely less on EF when making moral and social judgements.

Prosocial reasoning and emotions in young offenders and non-offenders

“…These results partially confirm the second hypothesis, given that although the importance of emotions and the low empathy in predicting aggressive behaviour and the important role of empathy in prosocial behaviour are confirmed, the prosocial moral behaviour only reaches predictor power in the non-offender population, while it is not a significant predictor of antisocial behaviour in adolescence (Leenders & Brugman, 2005;Tarry & Emler, 2007), only the low ability to put oneself in another's shoes is the cognitive variable that participates in the prediction. Other studies also indicate that young offenders practise more immature ways of perspective taking and moral reasoning (Lahat, Gummerum, Mackay, & Hanoch, 2015;Stams et al, 2006).…”

“…The adapted prosocial behaviour depends on cognitive and affective processes which interact (Stams et al, 2008). To better know factors associated to aggressive behaviour, it is important to understand the moral judgements that adolescents carry out, how they think when they direct or decide their behaviour, as their thoughts and moral affects can drive antisocial behaviour (Lahat et al, 2015).…”

Zombies in the Loop? Humans Trust Untrustworthy AI-Advisors for Ethical Decisions

“…While juvenile offenders' moral judgment is clearly impaired (Stams et al, 2006), the evidence for adult criminals is more mixed. However, recent studies did find systematic differences (Koenigs et al, 2011;Young et al, 2012;Lahat et al, 2015). For example, psychopaths attach lower relevance to fairness, authority, and others' suffering (Jonason et al, 2015), and they have lower reservations against inflicting harm on others (Koenigs et al, 2011).…”

“…Indeed, moral judgment is impaired by pathological traits (Campbell et al, 2009;Jonason et al, 2015;Blair, 2017), which are common among criminal offenders. There is also recent evidence that criminal offenders' judgment is biased relative to the average population (Koenigs et al, 2011;Young et al, 2012;Lahat et al, 2015). Of course, crime does not necessarily arise from a lack of moral judgment.…”

Exploring the relationship between morality and offending through the use of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire

“…They concluded juvenile delinquents engage in a lower level of moral reasoning than non-juvenile delinquents (Dodd et al, 1990). Later studies continue to suggest an association between moral reasoning and offending Lahat et al, 2015;Romeral et al, 2018;Spenser et al, 2015). However, a limitation of this interpretation is that offending may be better explained through moral relativism; some individuals may consider some of their actions as moral, yet society may deem their actions immoral and or illegal.…”