Moral Disengagement in Legal Judgments

Neal, Tess M. S.; Cramer, Robert J.

doi:10.1111/jels.12163

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 45 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, when elements of this decision process were measured ordinally, the effects we expected did emerge. It is not unusual to find this pattern of outcomes in legal decision research: often direct effects of biasing influences on ultimate legal decisions are elusive even when indirect effects of these same biasing influences are found in earlier elements of the decision process (e.g., Neal & Cramer, 2017; Neal et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence

Cox¹,

Daquin

Neal

2022

Criminal Justice and Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Prosecutors exercise substantial discretion within the criminal justice process, potentially allowing for discrepant treatment of criminal cases. The purpose of this research was to examine the association between prosecutorial implicit biases and victim gender and sexual orientation in an intimate partner violence (IPV) case. Participants, 201 prosecutors from across the United States, completed two Implicit Association Tests to measure implicit gender attitudes and implicit attitudes regarding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer individuals. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (opposite-sex couple/female victim, opposite-sex couple/male victim, same-sex couple/female victim, same-sex couple/male victim) and read a case file of an alleged IPV arrest. Consistent with our hypotheses, prosecutors were 65% more likely to prosecute under the severest criminal penalty when the victim was female or included an opposite-sex couple. However, we found no evidence that implicit biases related to prosecutorial decisions.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence

Cox¹,

Daquin

Neal

2022

Criminal Justice and Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This has led researchers to validate different versions of the scale to assess particular aspects of people's moral and social behavior. Several studies have presented validity tests and different first and second-order factorial models to evaluate moral disengagement in nurses in hospital contexts (Fida et al, 2014), high-performance athletes (Boardley & Kavussanu, 2007Corrion et al, 2010), pharmacists (C. , sexual harassment in hostile work environments (Page et al, 2015), in the field civic duties (Caprara et al, 2009), and legal contexts for criminal decision-making (Neal & Cramer, 2017). In light of this situation, there are different versions of the scale, each one with differences in the number of items and factorial structures.…”

Section: Article In Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Factorial Invariance of the Mechanisms of the Moral Disengagement Scale

Gómez-Tabare

Núñez

Grisales-Aguirre

et al. 2024

Anuario De Psicología Jurídica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The objective of this paper was to analyze the factorial structure, psychometric characteristics, and factorial invariance by sex, age, and city of the Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale in young university students. A total of 1,431 young people between the ages of 18 and 30 (M = 20.86, SD = 3.64) from two Colombian cities participated in the study. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test four hypothesized models. The CFA confirmed a first-order factor structure grouping the eight mechanisms of moral disengagement (Model 4), which explained 54.17% of the total variance. The final model obtained a good fit, χ 2 = 12.514, RMSEA = .010, TLI = .999, AGFI = .993, CFI = 1.00, ECVI = .044, CMIN/ df = 1.138. Factorial invariance by sex, age and city of the final proposed model was confirmed. Moral disengagement mechanisms were negatively correlated with empathy and prosocial tendencies. It is concluded that this scale is valid and reliable to assess moral disengagement in Colombian youth.

show abstract

“…Preexisting attitudes and beliefs can also color people’s decision-making and lead to motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990). For instance, we include studies investigating how various beliefs held by mental health experts affect their forensic judgments and decisions (Finnilä-Tuohimaa et al, 2009; Neal, 2016; Neal & Cramer, 2017).…”

Section: What Is Cognitive Bias?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health.

Neal¹,

Lienert²,

Denne³

et al. 2022

Law and Human Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective. Cognitive biases can impact experts' judgments and decisions. We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment. Although studies have explored the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in forensic mental health, we conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the findings. Hypotheses. Given the exploratory nature of this review, we did not test formal hypotheses. General research questions included the proportion of studies focusing on cognitive biases and/or debiasing, the research methods applied, the cognitive biases and debiasing strategies empirically studied in the forensic context, their effects on forensic mental health decisions, and effect sizes. Method. A systematic search of PsycINFO and Google Scholar resulted in 22 records comprising 23 studies in the United States, Canada, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. We extracted data on participants, context, methods, and results. Results. Most studies focused only on cognitive biases (k = 16, 69.6%), with fewer investigating ways to address them (k = 7, 30.4%). Of the 17 studies that tested for biases, 10 found significant effects (58.8%), four found partial effects (23.5%), and three found no effects (17.6%). Foci included general perceptions of biases; adversarial allegiance; bias blind spot; hindsight and confirmation biases; moral disengagement; primacy and recency effects; interview suggestibility; and cross-cultural, racial, and gender biases. Of the seven debiasing-related studies, nearly all (k = 6) focused at least in part on the general perception of debiasing strategies, with three testing for specific effects (i.e., cognitive bias training, consider-the-opposite, and introspection caution), two of which yielded significant effects. Conclusions. Considerable clinical and methodological heterogeneity limited quantitative comparability. Future research could build on the existing literature to develop or adapt effective debiasing strategies in collaboration with practitioners to improve the quality of forensic mental health decisions. Public Significance StatementEvidence of bias in forensic mental health emerged in ways consistent with what we know about human judgment broadly. We know less about how to debias judgments-an important frontier for future research. Better understanding how bias works and developing effective debiasing strategies tailored to the forensic mental health context hold promise for improving quality. Until then, we can use what we know now to limit bias in our work.

show abstract

Moral Disengagement in Legal Judgments

Cited by 13 publications

References 45 publications

Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence

Discretionary Prosecutorial Decision-Making: Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Bias in Intimate Partner Violence

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Factorial Invariance of the Mechanisms of the Moral Disengagement Scale

A general model of cognitive bias in human judgment and systematic review specific to forensic mental health.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About