Nobody is better than you: opportunistic moral identity of sexual batterers

Abstract

Modern societies devise sexual violence as a social problem. Legal psychologists highlight the importance of identifying those variables that increase the likelihood of violent behaviour occurs – risk factors- and those variables that increase their opposition to have deviant behaviours -protective factors-. For these reasons, the objective of this work is to study moral identity and moral disengagement as variables strongly related to violent behaviour, in a sample of institutionalized men (sexual offenders and intimate partner batterers) and in a sample of community men to analyse the differences between them. The sample was composed of 91 convicted and 133 community participants who voluntarily completed The Self-Importance of Moral Identity Scale and The Propensity to Moral Disengagement Scale. Variance analysis, bivariate correlations and hierarchical regressions were performed in order to analyse the differences in each of the variables between groups; to test the relationships between study variables, and to find out which mechanisms of moral disengagement are associated with both factors of moral identity in each group. Results show significant differences between groups in both factors of moral identity (internalization F (1, 224) = 20.72, p <.001; and symbolization F (1, 224) = 14.52, p <. 001). Bivariate correlations showed relationship only between symbolization and moral disengagement in institutionalized participants and lastly, different mechanisms of moral disengagement were associated with both factors of moral identity in each group. Finally, the practical implications of these results were discussed to improve the psychological interventions with sexual offenders and intimate partner batterers