The measurement of simulated stealing behaviour and moral judgement — a technique

Abstract

A technique is described which attempts to measure the responses of children ia hypothetical stealing dilemmas. A technique embodying two forms, a so-called "did do" version and a "should do" version, was constructed. The "did do" version was an attempt to represent the child in an "actual" though hypothetical stealing dleauna and throagb the use of the first person pronoun "I", contrast this with a situation in which the cbild could respond in terms of how he or she thought he or she should. A series of bigldy significant differences within the groups on the "did do" and "should do" versions was noted, together with significant differences between the "delinquent" and "normal" populations. It was argued that such differences indicated that the p r d u r e had good validity as well as acceptable reliability.There are three usual procedures employed in attempts to examine the nature of deviance: (i) the use of official statistics which for many offences are highly questionable and can be varied according to a range of political and social pressures; (ii) self report measures which depend heavily upon the honest answering of subjects and which do have a reasonable measure of concurrent validity although their reliability over long periods of time is sometimes low (Braithwaite, 1977); and (iii) to examine the behaviour of subjects from their own perception of events. This third procedure is based on the assumption that what the actor thinks is going on can be more important in shaping an outcome than what actually goes on. Thus it is what the actor thinks that will shape his or her responses to events and pressures.Each of these procedures has major methodological weaknesses and some are more appropriate than others for examining particular types of deviance.There is a need for a refined micro analysis of the mental operations and characteristics of persons in stealing dilemmas. This paper reports on a test procedure for looking at the "decision" responses of children in stealing dilemmas and examines the reliability and validity of such an approach.It was argued that since petty stealing from stores, supermarkets and departmental stores is a major crime facing our society and since millions of dollars are lost annually by such actions on the part of Requests for reprints should be sent to Merrill S. Jackson,