Looking at the moral judgments of offenders through new lenses
Journal of Criminal Psychology
ISSN: 2009-3829
Article publication date: 28 July 2022
Issue publication date: 18 October 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Studies on the moral judgment of offenders conducted within a neo-Kolhbergian framework found that offenders exhibit more primitive thinking about moral issues compared to nonoffenders. The purpose of this study is to explore, within the mental model theory, the role of reasoning in moral judgments of offenders, considering both similarities and differences with nonoffenders.
Design/methodology/approach
A series of moral scenarios were randomly presented to both offenders and nonoffenders. Participants were asked to report their reactions for each scenario. Their reactions were coded and assessed.
Findings
Findings show that moral judgments rely on the same reasoning processes in both offenders and nonoffenders: a moral scenario, in which propositions related to norms and values were manipulated, led to a scenario that generated a moral conflict (Study 1), but offenders had more intuitions about immoral scenarios than nonoffenders (Study 2). Moreover, the results partially confirm the prediction that offenders are more likely to deliberately reason about scenarios that described those crimes similar to the ones they committed (Study 3).
Originality/value
This study highlights the importance of understanding that moral judgments in both offenders and nonoffenders rely on the same reasoning processes, even though offenders tend to reason more on scenarios near to the crimes they committed. This has practical implications for interventions in so far as it could have an effect in how prosocial functioning could be promoted.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the three reviewers for their critical and insightful suggestions that helped improve the article. The authors are also very grateful to Dr Clare Allely for her professionalism and expertise as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Criminal Psychology.Ethics approval: The authors declare that the present study complies with the current Italian laws and with the ethics principles for research in psychology. The study was approved by the Bioethic Committee of the University of Turin (Italy) (protocol reference number 6494/2018). The research protocol was organized according to The Italian Data Protection Authority Act nr. 9/2016, art. 1 and 2 (application and scientific research purposes), and to the recent General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, 2018), and it was carried out in line with the Italian and the EU code of human research ethics and conduct in psychology.
Citation
Zara, G., Veggi, S., Ianì, F. and Bucciarelli, M. (2022), "Looking at the moral judgments of offenders through new lenses", Journal of Criminal Psychology, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 90-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-04-2022-0010
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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