Mechanisms of moral disingagement in sex offenders

Abstract

Objectives Moral disengagement (MD) consists of those social-cognitive strategies by which people disengage themselves from norms and responsibility. Through “dehumanization” victims are divested of human dignity so that they no longer arouse any feelings of identification, empathy and solidarity. In disengagement by “attribution of blame”, all responsibility for a given detrimental event is attributed to a presumed provocative attitude of the victim. This study aims to assess whether sex offenders (SO) have higher moral disengagement than non-offenders (NO) and if they show higher scores for “dehumanization” and “attribution of blame” than non-sexual offenders (NSO). Methods Participants were fifty-three male subjects: 13 convicted of sexual offences, 15 convicted of non-sexual offences and 25 non-offenders. After an interview regarding personal history and crime committed (offenders only) the “Moral Disengagement Scale” was administered. ANOVA and post hoc analysis were performed on total disengagement score, on “dehumanization” and on “attribution of blame”. Repeated measure ANOVA was performed among SO. Results The SO yielded a significantly lower score on total disengagement and “dehumanization”. The NSO scored significantly more highly on “attribution of blame”. Also, SO mostly utilize mechanisms of moral disengagement different from “dehumanization” and “attribution of blame”, i.e. “advantageous comparison”, “euphemistic labelling” and “moral justification”. Conclusions Such unexpected results may be explained by SO being more susceptible to social norms and expectations in the specific judicial contest (social desirability), although it cannot be ruled out that the instrument used is not sufficiently sensitive to detect MD among the specific population of SO.