Immigration-related socio-cognitive dynamics driving digital hate: a four-country study on online incivility and intolerance perpetration

School bullying is a complex social and relational phenomenon with severe consequences for those involved. Most children view bullying as wrong and recognize its harmful consequences; nevertheless, it continues to be a persistent problem within schools. Previous research has shown that children's engagement in bullying perpetration can be influenced by multiple factors (e.g., different forms of cognitive distortions) and at different ecological levels (e.g., child, peer-group, school, and society). However, the complexity of school bullying warrants further investigation of the interplay between factors, at different levels. Grounded in social cognitive theory, which focuses on both cognitive factors and social processes, this study examined whether children's bullying perpetration was associated with moral disengagement at the child level and with collective moral disengagement and prevalence of pro-bullying behavior at the classroom level. Cross-level interactions were also tested to examine the effects of classroom-level variables on the association between children's tendency to morally disengage and bullying perpetration. The study's analyses were based on cross-sectional self-report questionnaire data from 1,577 Swedish fifth-grade children from 105 classrooms (53.5% girls; Mage = 11.3, SD = 0.3). Multilevel modeling techniques were used to analyze the data. The results showed that bullying perpetration was positively associated with moral disengagement at the child level and with collective moral disengagement and pro-bullying behavior at the classroom level. Furthermore, the effect of individual moral disengagement on bullying was stronger for children in classrooms with higher levels of pro-bullying behaviors. These findings further support the argument that both moral processes and behaviors within classrooms, such as collective moral disengagement and pro-bullying behavior, need to be addressed in schools' preventive work against bullying.

There have been studies establishing the relationship between moral disengagement and aggressiveness in various contexts, especially in the role of the aggressor. Few, however, have analyzed moral disengagement’s mediating role in the phenomenon of teenage dating violence, taking into account how these mechanisms affect the victims’ perception of themselves as fearful, trapped, or mistreated in a dating relationship. This study analyzes the relationship between moral disengagement, the acceptance of violence, and how the victims of this type of abuse perceive victimization. The participants were 2577 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18. They completed two questionnaires that addressed teenage dating violence and moral disengagement. To study the relationship between the variables, factorial, structural, correlation, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed to construct the perceptual structure of victimization. The analyses showed moral disengagement and the acceptance of violence, as well as their interaction, to have a mediating and moderating influence by modifying the perception of victimization. The victims’ levels of moral disengagement explained their acceptance of the violence and their inability to recognize abuse. Finally, these results may be a key element in the design of psychological interventions aimed at minimizing the use of moral disengagement and the acceptance of violence in situations involving aggression in teenage dating.

BackgroundWith the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals, especially nurses, are confronted with an intensified workload. The literature on compulsory citizenship behaviors and their consequences is still far from explaining the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that underlie this relationship.MethodsDrawing on the resource depletion theory, we unpack the mechanism by which compulsory citizenship behaviors influence moral disengagement with the mediation effects of anger toward the organization. We are reporting a cross-sectional survey of nurses (n = 294) in private and public hospitals in Istanbul, Turkey. The data analysis involved structural equation modeling and Bayesian mediation.ResultsThe study revealed that compulsory citizenship behaviors positively influenced anger toward the organization and moral disengagement. Further, anger toward the organization mediates the link between compulsory citizenship behaviors and moral disengagement. Likewise, the Bayesian mediation analysis indicated that the proportion mediated (PM), which ensures a prediction of the extent to which the pathway explains the total effect through the mediation effect, was 33.74%.ConclusionThe findings show that exposure to compulsory citizenship behaviors lead to negative emotional (anger toward to organization) and cognitive (moral disengagement) consequences in nurses.Practical implicationsHospital managers should not force nurses to display discretionary work tasks outside their job descriptions. Providing an organizational milieu where voluntarily extra-role behaviors are encouraged may help reduce nurses’ moral disengagement and, in turn, ease their anger toward the organization.

The purpose of the study was to advance our understanding of the developmental precursors of Moral Disengagement (MD) and the role of MD in the development of antisocial behavior from early risk among an ethnically diverse sample of 187 low-income boys followed prospectively from ages 1.5 to 17. Results indicated associations between early rejecting parenting, neighborhood impoverishment, and child empathy and later MD. The link between some of these early constructs and later antisocial behavior was mediated by MD. Finally, in an exploratory path model both MD and biases in social information processing were found to mediate separate paths from early risk factors to later antisocial behavior. Results were partially consistent with the notion that adolescent MD was predicted by a combination of early family, neighborhood, and child risk factors, and that MD may be a mechanism underlying some boys' risk of antisocial behavior.

In this Research Full Paper, we investigate moral disengagement among first-year engineering students. Current engineering ethics education typically assumes that providing information about what is ethical (i.e., as explicated in ethical codes) and developing ethical reasoning skills will lead to ethical behaviors in the classroom and on the job. However, we know that people, including students and practicing engineers, sometimes engage in unethical conduct. Bandura's theory of moral disengagement explains how people disengage from their ethical principles and behave unethically. In this paper, we investigate and characterize moral disengagement among first-year engineering students. This study is based on survey and interview data collected from first-year engineering students at four U.S. universities as part of a larger longitudinal, mixed-methods research project. Our survey sample showed similar or lower moral disengagement scores as compared to other studies, while our interview data revealed how different students applied different ethical frames when evaluating moral situations and/or making moral decisions. Moreover, seven of the eight types of moral disengagement measured by the survey instrument were evident in our interview data, and we propose another mechanism called unreflective disengagement. We expect our study will be of interest to researchers and engineering educators who wish to better understand moral disengagement among students, including as a potentially relevant factor in ongoing efforts to enhance engineering ethics training.

There has been recent UK media attention on the global impact of the cocaine trade and the morality of personal use of cocaine powder. In this study we investigated whether people who use cocaine engage in moral disengagement (MD) strategies to reduce anticipated guilt associated with use. Participants read text describing the impact of the global cocaine market on others and completed a range of measures including assessments of substance use, MD, anticipated guilt, internalised moral identity, and empathy. We hypothesised that cocaine-related MD would positively predict cocaine use, and this would be partly mediated by anticipated guilt. Complete data were obtained from 254 participants through an anonymous cross-sectional survey (59.8% Female; mean age 30.8 ± 12.6 years). Our hypotheses were supported; (i) MD predicted cocaine use positively and anticipated guilt negatively; (ii) anticipated guilt negatively predicted cocaine use; anticipated guilt partially mediated the relationship between MD and cocaine use. People who use powder cocaine may use MD to reduce the anticipated guilt associated with knowledge of the harms associated with the drugs trade. Campaigns that focus on the morality of cocaine use or ethical choices may therefore have limited impact unless MD is challenged as part of these campaigns.

Exploring moral disengagement in meat consumption among Malaysian youth - A cross-sectional study.

This article advances understanding of the antecedents and outcomes of moral disengagement by testing hypotheses with 3 waves of survey data from 307 business and education undergraduate students. The authors theorize that 6 individual differences will either increase or decrease moral disengagement, defined as a set of cognitive mechanisms that deactivate moral self-regulatory processes and thereby help to explain why individuals often make unethical decisions without apparent guilt or self-censure (Bandura, 1986). Results support 4 individual difference hypotheses, specifically, that empathy and moral identity are negatively related to moral disengagement, while trait cynicism and chance locus of control orientation are positively related to moral disengagement. Two additional locus of control orientations are not significantly related to moral disengagement. The authors also hypothesize and find that moral disengagement is positively related to unethical decision making. Finally, the authors hypothesize that moral disengagement plays a mediating role between the individual differences they studied and unethical decisions. Their results offer partial support for these mediating hypotheses. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research and for practice.

본 연구는 1차성 정신병질과 2차성 정신병질이 상호 이질적인 장애임을 제언하는 선행연구 결과들을 근거로, 비윤리적 행동에 이르는 1차성 정신병질과 2차성 정신병질의 심리적 과정을 이해하는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 이를 위해 남녀 대학생 647명을 대상으로 자기보고식 정신병질 질문지(LSRP) 및 한국판 성인용 도덕적 이탈 척도, 도덕적 정서 시나리오 척도, 비윤리적 의사결정 척도를 실시하였다. 1, 2차성 정신병질 특성과 비윤리적 의사결정 간의 관계에 도덕적 정서와 도덕적 이탈이 매개하는 연구모형의 적합도를 검증하고, 이들 간의 직․간접효과를 확인하였다. 그 결과, 비윤리적 의사결정에 대한 1차성 정신병질 특성의 직접효과가 확인되었다. 또한, 1차성 정신병질 특성과 비윤리적 의사결정 간의 관계에 도덕적 정서와 도덕적 이탈의 간접효과가 확인되었다. 2차성 정신병질 특성과 비윤리적 의사결정 간의 관계에서는 도덕적 이탈의 완전매개 효과가 확인되었다. 마지막으로, 본 연구가 갖는 임상적 함의 및 제한점에 대해 논의하고 후속 연구의 방향을 제언하였다.

Moral disengagement refers to the cognitive strategies individuals use to justify unethical actions, enabling them to override personal or institutional norms without experiencing self-sanction. While widely studied in student misconduct and Western academic settings, limited empirical attention has been paid to how academic professionals in low-resource, non-Western contexts disengage morally in their professional roles. This mixed-methods study investigates the prevalence, mechanisms, and contextual drivers of moral disengagement among faculty in Nepalese universities. Survey data from 212 faculty members, measured using the Moral Disengagement in Academia Scale (MDAS), indicate high levels of disengagement. Specifically, 68% reported diffusion of responsibility, 61% demonstrated moral justification, and 57% expressed attribution of blame as frequent patterns of disengagement. Complementary interviews with 30 faculty and administrators further provide deeper insights into the underlying dynamics of these disengagement patterns. Complementary interviews with 30 faculty and administrators provide deeper insights into how collectivist cultural norms, institutional ambiguity, and survival-driven pressures normalize misconduct and offer ethical rationalizations. The study seeks to identify dominant mechanisms of disengagement, explore the institutional, cultural, and psychological factors that facilitate or inhibit these processes, and understand how academics rationalize unethical behaviors within environments marked by systemic ambiguity, collectivist values, and limited resources. Findings suggest that in contexts characterized by weak ethical oversight, politicized governance, and vague professional standards, moral disengagement becomes an adaptive mechanism. The study extends Bandura’s theoretical framework and offers implications for ethics policy, leadership development, and governance reform in South Asian higher education.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a model that integrates moral disengagement (MD) and organizational ethical climate (OEC) to understand information security policy (ISP) violation behavior in the workplace. This study extends prior work by identifying the moderating mechanisms of the ethical culture of OECs in the relationship between employees’ MD and ISP violation behavior intention. Design/methodology/approach By using scenario-based survey data from 433 employees in Chinese enterprises and by applying PLS-based structural equation modeling, the authors test a series of hypotheses. Findings Our empirical results highlight that the concept of MD has a significant effect on employees’ intention to violate ISPs. The authors also find that the OEC has a moderating role in the relationship between MD and ISP violation intention: the moderating role of law-and-rule-oriented OEC is significantly negative, but instrumentalism-oriented OEC positively moderates this relationship. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on information security behavior by integrating two ethical theory frameworks MD and OECs into one theoretical model, and it calls attention to how ethical factors at the individual cognition level and organizational climate level work together to influence personal information security behavior. This study provides a new perspective of OEC from which to understand policy violation caused by moral self-regulation failure, and empirically explores its moderating role.

Mediating role of moral disengagement in the perpetration of cyberbullying by victims and bystanders.

IntroductionChildhood abuse and bullying are youth problem worldwide, yet the detrimental effects of child abuse is underestimated in China. The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between child abuse and bullying and victimization, and to explore the mediating roles of self-esteem, peer relationships, and moral disengagement in the chain between childhood abuse, school bullying, and victimization among junior high school.MethodsThis study included 1,327 adolescents (52.3% girls, 47.3% boys) from public schools in Sichuan Province, China. We conducted a cross-sectional questionnaire survey using the Child Trauma Scale-Short Form, Bullying Participatory Behavior Questionnaire, Self-Esteem Scale, Peer Relationships Scale, and the Moral Disengagement Questionnaire. The bootstrap technique was used to conduct mediation analysis. SPSS Process Macro 3.0 control prepared by Hayes, Gender and grade were used as the control variables in model 6.ResultsChildhood abuse significantly predicts both bullying (B =0.08, p < 0.001) and victimization (B =0.17, p < 0.001). Meanwhile, the serial mediating effect via self-esteem, peer relationships and moral disengagement between childhood abuse and bullying was 0.0015 (95% CI: 0.0003–0.0029), the serial mediating effect via self-esteem, peer relationships and moral disengagement between childhood abuse and bullying victimization was 0.0005 (95% CI: 0.0000–0.0014).DiscussionThe investigation into the chain mediating effects of self-esteem, peer relationships, and moral disengagement on the interconnections between childhood abuse, bullying, and bullying victimization has deepened our understanding of the cycles of violence and victimization. It has pointed out that family factors may be key elements in bullying prevention.

The present study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the attitude–behavior link in the sphere of environmental issues by taking into account the role of moral disengagement. Pro-environmental attitudes, at both the implicit and explicit levels, were considered under the hypothesis that they may have direct and indirect effects on pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) through moral disengagement. The hypothesized relationships specified in the mediation model were tested by administering a cross-sectional online survey to a convenience sample of adult students enrolled in a digital university (N = 176; Mage = 40.54, SDage = 14) via Millisecond Inquisit Web. The assessment included instruments measuring environmental moral disengagement and explicit attitudes toward the adoption of PEBs, together with an ad hoc Implicit Association Test designed to capture implicit attitudes toward sustainability, and the use of a pro-environmental behavior rating scale. While the sensitivity to model misfit was limited given the achieved sample size, the results from the path analysis show that implicit attitudes do not have a direct effect on PEBs, while explicit attitudes directly influence them. Moreover, as positive explicit and implicit pro-environmental and sustainability attitudes increase, moral disengagement decreases, which in turn negatively affects PEBs. Overall, the present findings confirm that moral disengagement plays a mediating role, and that attitudes can be targets for potential interventions aimed at promoting pro-environmental behaviors and addressing justificatory mechanisms that hinder their adoption.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education creates a learning paradox, enhancing productivity while enabling hard-to-detect misconduct, challenging ethical boundaries, and university policies. Drawing on moral disengagement (MD) theory, this study examines how AI engagement conditions, captured by the Motive, Means, Opportunity (MMO) framework, amplify MD’s effect on misconduct among graduate business students. Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) offers a learning process lens to locate where MD and its MMO conditions unfold within the learning cycle. Survey data from 226 UK-based students shows that MD predicts AI misconduct, with amplification from AI-related factors (usefulness, habit, obsessive passion, prompt engineering skill) and past misconduct. Policy enforcement mitigates this effect, while policy clarity is effective only when paired with enforcement. Unexpectedly, high-performing students are more likely to act on MD when scanning for misconduct opportunities. Our findings underline how AI engagement undermines ethical regulation, offering insights for institutional policy in AI-enabled learning environments.