Variability in Moral Disengagement and Its Relation to Offending in a Sample of Serious Youthful Offenders

Abstract

Bandura's theory of moral disengagement (MD) refers to the freeing of oneself from moral or ethical standards to engage in wrongdoing. Little is known about heterogeneity in MD among serious adolescent offenders, how MD changes over time in the transition from adolescence to early adulthood, and how such heterogeneity corresponds to offending. we used data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a longitudinal study of a sample of serious youthful offenders followed for 7 years, to examine trajectories of MD as well as the relationship of these trajectories to offending. Furthermore, we assessed whether MD varied by demographic and individual characteristics. Results indicated the presence of three trajectories: low, moderate, and high patterns. Females and whites were more likely to be in the low-MD trajectory, whereas Hispanics were more likely to be in the high-MD trajectory. Respondents in the moderate or high-MD trajectories had more re-arrests at the 7-year follow-up relative to those in the low-MD trajectory, net of controls.

Dark tourism and moral disengagement in liminal spaces

“…Analyzing how these psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement work in the dark tourism sector can help to understand implications for moral conduct of tourists and devise better management strategies at dark tourism sites to avoid conflicts, minimize tourist transgressive behavior and promote sober and respectful touristic engagement. Moral disengagement theory has already been used for empirical research across a number of disciplines and contexts such as child psychology (Obermann, 2013), organizational behavior (Martin et al, 2014;Cohen, Panter, Turan, Morse, & Kim, 2014), criminology (Cardwell et al, 2015), military behavior (McAlister, Bandura, & Owen, 2006), and sports psychology (Boardley & Kavussanu, 2008).…”

Perceived Police Injustice, Moral Disengagement, and Aggression Among Juvenile Offenders: Utilizing the General Strain Theory Model

“…Moral disengagement theory has been applied to child and adolescent populations to better understand risk for aggressive or violent behaviors (Gini, Pozzoli, & Hymel, 2014; Hymel & Bonanno, 2014; Hymel & Perren, 2015). Strong evidence has also been found among juvenile offender populations, indicating that moral disengagement predicts aggressive behaviors (Kiriakidis, 2008), delinquency (Mulford, 2004) and reoffending rates (Cardwell et al, 2015; Shulman, Cauffmann, Piquero, & Fagan, 2011), yet to date no study has examined the interactive effect of moral disengagement and police interactions among juvenile populations.…”

Can a Dynamic Risk Instrument Make Short-Term Predictions in "Real Time"? Developing a Framework for Testing Proximal Assessment of Offender Recidivism Risk During Re-entry

“…However, many of the existing multi--wave studies do not share the primary goals of correctional psychology. In particular, the criminology literature often conducts longitudinal research with (a) non--offender juvenile populations, in order to identify the correlates of delinquency onset (e.g., Chen, 2010;Childs, Sullivan, & Gulledge, 2011) or (b) juvenile offenders, in order to describe the developmental differences between normative, rule--breaking adolescents and long--term, serious offenders (e.g., Cardwell et al, 2015;Shulman, Cauffman, Piquero, & Fagan, 2011). In addition, the longitudinal literature has often focused on patterns of criminal behavior across many years or decades (e.g., Kazemian, Farrington, & Le Blanc, 2009;Monahan & Piquero, 2009), with specific attention to patterns of onset, escalation, and cessation of crime (see Piquero, 2008, for a review).…”