Moral Self-sanctions Research Articles

A Psychometric Analysis of the Moral Disengagement Scale (MDS) in Association to Bullying Roles in Colombian Youth

AbstractThe Moral Disengagement Scale (MDS) is a widely employed tool for assessing moral neutralization strategies in the context of bullying. However, studies conducted globally exhibit inconsistencies in both the factor structure and the number of items comprising the MDS. This study was conducted to assess the reliability and factor structure of the MDS within a sample of Colombian adolescents (N = 375; M age = 13.3; SD = 1.69) and to compare the use of MD mechanisms across victims, perpetrators, non-involved students, and bystanders of school bullying. To begin, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) compared the fit indices of theoretical models proposed in the existing literature. The results revealed that all previously suggested models exhibited similar fit indices, indicating that these structures could be equally applicable for evaluating various dimensions of moral disengagement among adolescent populations. In order to identify the most suitable model for our culturally specific sample, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) pointed towards a more concise 13-item version of the MDS as the optimal solution. Individuals meeting the scores for “bullies” employed more MD mechanisms compared to victims and non-involved students. There were no significant differences in MDS scores between pro-victim bystanders and those remaining passive or supporting aggressors. In light of these findings, targeting cognitive mechanisms that neutralize moral self-sanctions in perpetrators and potential bystanders of bullying may prove to be a valuable strategy in enhancing the effectiveness of anti-bullying interventions.

A social cognitive perspective of educators’ moral agency

ABSTRACT By and large, teachers approach their work with the utmost care for students’ intellectual, social, and emotional well-being. But even those who hold themselves to high moral standards can sometimes act in ways that harm others when they disengage self-sanctions like guilt or self-criticism. These mechanisms of moral disengagement include (1) portraying harmful acts as beneficial, (2) obscuring one’s own role in harm, (3) minimizing the harmful effects of one’s actions, and (4) viewing victims as less-than-human or deserving of blame. Because moral self-sanctions can be both disengaged and reengaged, we examine how these mechanisms operate in educators’ social systems and point to practices that may promote their moral engagement. We end our piece with a call for interventions that disrupt disengagement and promote moral self-efficacy.

Moral Disengagement as a Self-Regulatory Cognitive Process of Transgressions: Psychometric Evidence of the Bandura Scale in Chilean Adolescents.

Moral disengagement is a process of cognitive restructuring that allows individuals to disassociate from their internal moral standards and behave unethically without feeling distressed. It has been described as a key predictor of maladaptive behaviors (e.g., delinquency, aggression, and cyberbullying) and as a mediator between individual variables and unethical outcomes (e.g., empathy and aggression). We aimed to provide evidence of validity based on the internal structure, reliability, and correlations with other constructs of the most used instrument to measure disengagement from moral self-sanctions: Bandura’s Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale (MMDS). A non-probabilistic national sample of 528 Chilean adolescents from 14 to 18 years participated in the study. The results showed that the 10-item version of the MMDS had a unidimensional structure and good internal consistency. As expected, the MMDS-10 showed positive and medium correlations with abusive, violent antisocial, and delinquent behaviors and negative and medium associations with prosocial behavior and empathy. Additionally, moral disengagement fully mediated the relationship between empathy and violent antisocial behavior, supporting the hypothesis on moral disengagement as a self-regulatory cognitive process. The results confirm previous research, and the findings are discussed in terms of their implications for reducing the use of moral disengagement strategies in adolescence.

Validation of the Moral Disengagement Scale among Some Iranian University Students

Background: Moral disengagement is a variable in the social cognitive theory of morality and includes eight cognitive, psychosocial mechanisms by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct. Objectives: The aim of the present study was to validate a university student replica of the moral disengagement scale among some Iranian university students. Methods: This validation study was based on the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) method. The statistical population consisted of 346 undergraduate students at the Salman Farsi University of Kazerun. Also, 44 other undergraduate students were participated to examine the test-retest reliability of the scale. Both samples were selected by convenient sampling. The main sample completed the 32-item Moral Disengagement scale and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. CFA (by AMOS 24), stability coefficients, Cronbach's alpha, and multiple analysis of variance (ANOVA) (all by SPSS 16) were used to study gender differences. Results: The indices of CFA for the 32-item scale were not satisfactory, then an item in all subscales with the lesser beta was dropped, and the scale included only 24-items. The indices of CFA of the 24-item scale were satisfactory. The internal consistency for the whole scale was desirable (α: .817) and for the subscales were adequate. Test-retest correlations were not desirable for the whole scale (r: .693) and for the subscales. The total score and the scores of some subscales were negatively correlated with social desirability. The total score and the scores of some subscales also were greater in males. Conclusions: The satisfactory indices of CFA and also the higher scores of males in the 24-item scale confirmed its construct validity. However, correlations between the scale and social desirability did not confirm the ideal divergent validity. Thus, assessing the social desirability beside the scale can clarify interpreting the scores. The obtained test-retest reliability suggests that this scale cannot assess a stable variable, and according beside the social cognitive theory, it is better to consider moral disengagement as a changeable and inconstant variable.

US AGAINST THEM: IDEOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ASHURNASIRPAL II'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ASSYRIAN REBELS IN ḪALZILUḪA

This paper is a study of the rebellion against the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II in the city of Ḫalziluḫa in 882bc, which is an unusual instance of a rebellion by Assyrians being recorded in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. This paper explores the significance of the rebellion from two angles: the ideological problem of rebellion by Assyrians, and the psychological impact on Assyrian troops of killing their fellow Assyrians. Within the ideology of the royal inscriptions, Assyrians did not normally rebel against the incumbent king, who was in all ways presented as a model ruler. It will be argued that Ashurnasirpal therefore made efforts in his inscriptions to stress that the Assyrian rebels in Ḫalziluḫa inhabited territory that had been lost to Assyria prior to his reign, and had become “de-Assyrianised” and “uncivilised.” It will be argued that a similar message was conveyed to the Assyrian soldiers through the ceremonies surrounding the creation of a monument at the source of the River Subnat, and that this message helped the soldiers to “morally disengage” from the act of killing other Assyrians, thus avoiding “moral self-sanctions” for an otherwise morally problematic act.

Moral Disengagement Processes in Bullying

Bullying is the most common form of interpersonal violence facing youth in schools, and recent school-based intervention efforts have shown only limited success in reducing such behavior. Accordingly, this article considers the utility of Albert Bandura's theory of moral disengagement in understanding bullying behavior among children and youth. Originally developed to explain how adults are able to engage in extreme forms of aggression without apparent self-condemnation, we review research examining the links between moral disengagement and peer bullying and aggression in children and adolescents, documenting significant associations between the ability to disengage from moral self-sanctions and aggressive behavior (including bullying). Given these links, we consider the implications of these findings for educational practice.

Can an Ethical Person be an Ethical Prosecutor? A Social Cognitive Approach to Systemic Reform

This Article argues that certain key structural factors within the prosecutorial system in the United States lead to prosecutorial misconduct by systematically encouraging 'moral disengagement' in prosecutors. 'Moral disengagement' refers to the social cognition theory developed by Albert Bandura and others, which identifies the mechanisms that operate to disengage an individual’s moral self-sanctions that would otherwise inhibit the individual from engaging in injurious conduct. Empirical studies have shown that a person’s level of moral disengagement, as a dispositional trait, is an accurate predictor of the person’s level of aggression and anti-social behavior, and that an individual’s level of moral disengagement can be affected by the social structures within which the person operates. Legal scholars have applied moral disengagement theory on a social systems level to identify conditions structured into the criminal justice system that encourage moral disengagement in capital juries and in mental heath professionals who are involved in capital cases. This Article employs social cognition research on moral disengagement to argue that the criminal justice system encourages moral disengagement in prosecutors by providing moral justification for the behavior (the pursuit of justice), diffusing and displacing responsibility (through the division of the truth-finding function among multiple actors), and degrading defendants (dehumanizing them through lack of contact and derogatory labels, and blaming them for their plight). While these moral disengagement mechanisms provide some social benefit by allowing individuals to serve as prosecutors free of inhibitory self-sanctions, they co-exist with other systemic characteristics that may act in concert with the mechanisms to produce detrimental effects. While encouraging prosecutors to morally disengage from self-sanctions for harmful conduct towards defendants, prosecutors are afforded almost unfettered discretion in deciding who to prosecute, for what charges, whether to engage in plea discussions, and whether to seek the death penalty. In addition, prosecutors operate in an environment where they are motivated to obtain convictions and appear 'hard on crime.' This Article argues that such conditions provide the 'perfect storm' for encouraging prosecutors to stretch the bounds of their ethical duties to defendants.

Moral Disengagement in the Corporate World

We analyze mechanisms of moral disengagement used to eliminate moral consequences by industries whose products or production practices are harmful to human health. Moral disengagement removes the restraint of self-censure from harmful practices. Moral self-sanctions can be selectively disengaged from harmful activities by investing them with socially worthy purposes, sanitizing and exonerating them, displacing and diffusing responsibility, minimizing or disputing harmful consequences, making advantageous comparisons, and disparaging and blaming critics and victims. Internal industry documents and public statements related to the research activities of these industries were coded for modes of moral disengagement by the tobacco, lead, vinyl chloride (VC), and silicosis-producing industries. All but one of the modes of moral disengagement were used by each of these industries. We present possible safeguards designed to protect the integrity of research.

Impeding ecological sustainability through selective moral disengagement

The present paper documents the influential role played by selective moral disengagement for social practices that cause widespread human harm and degrade the environment. Disengagement of moral self-sanctions enables people to pursue detrimental practices freed from the restraint of self-censure. This is achieved by investing ecologically harmful practices with worthy purposes through social, national, and economic justifications; enlisting exonerative comparisons that render the practices righteous; use of sanitising and convoluting language that disguises what is being done; reducing accountability by displacement and diffusion of responsibility; ignoring, minimising, and disputing harmful effects; and dehumanising and blaming the victims and derogating the messengers of ecologically bad news. These psychosocial mechanisms operate at both the individual and social systems levels.

Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in Support of Military Force: The Impact of Sept. 11

The present study examined the relation between disengagement of moral self-sanctions and support of military force. The modes of moral disengagement included moral sanctioning of lethal means, disavowal of personal responsibility for detrimental effects accompanying military campaigns, minimization of civilian casualties, and attribution of blame and dehumanization of one's foes. The respondents were drawn nationally through a random digit dialing interview system. Partway during this nationwide study the country experienced the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 terrorist strikes raised the level of moral disengagement for the use of military force compared to the pre-strike level. The higher the moral disengagement the stronger the public support for immediate retaliatory strikes against suspected terrorist sanctuaries abroad and for aerial bombardment of Iraq. Moral disengagement completely mediated the effect of the terrorist attack. Moreover, moral disengagement completely mediated the effect of sociodemographic factors on support of military force against terrorist sanctuaries and partially mediated the effect on military force against Iraq.

The Role of Moral Disengagement in the Execution Process.

The present study tested the proposition that disengagement of moral self-sanctions enables prison personnel to carry out the death penalty. Three subgroups of personnel in penitentiaries located in three Southern states were assessed in terms of eight mechanisms of moral disengagement. The personnel included the execution teams that carry out the executions; the support teams that provide solace and emotional support to the families of the victims and the condemned inmate; and prison guards who have no involvement in the execution process. The executioners exhibited the highest level of moral, social, and economic justifications, disavowal of personal responsibility, and dehumanization. The support teams that provide the more humane services disavowed moral disengagement, as did the noninvolved guards but to a lesser degree than the support teams.

The Moral Disengagement Scale: Extension with an American Minority Sample

This study extended an investigation by A. Bandura, C. Barbaranelli, G. V. Caprara, and C. Pastorelli (1996) by examining the structure, reliability, and correlates of the Moral Disengagement Scale (MDS), which measures disengagement from moral self-sanctions. Furthermore, the role of moral disengagement in the association between parenting and child behavior was examined. Two hundred and forty-five African American single-parent mothers and one of their children (mean age = 11.4 years) participated in the study. The MDS had similar factor structure, internal consistency, and demographic correlates as those reported by A. Bandura et al. (1996) with an Italian sample of children. The MDS also correlated with delinquent and aggressive child behavior, and moral disengagement partially mediated the relationship between parenting and child delinquent behavior.

Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency

Moral agency has dual aspects manifested in both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely. Moral agency is embedded in a broader socio-cognitive self-theory encompassing affective self-regulatory mechanisms rooted in personal standards linked to self-sanctions. Moral functioning is thus governed by self-reactive selfhood rather than by dispassionate abstract reasoning. The self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated and there are many psychosocial mechanisms by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct. The moral disengagement may centre on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification, sanitising language and exonerative social comparison; disavowal of personal agency in the harm one causes by diffusion or displacement of responsibility; disregarding or minimising the injurious effects of one's actions; and attribution of blame to, and dehumanisation of, those who are victimised. Social cognitive theory adopts an interactionist perspective to morality in which moral actions are the products of the reciprocal interplay of personal and social influences. Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control at both the individual and collective level, civilised life requires, in addition to humane personal standards, safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behaviour and renounce cruelty.

Sociocognitive self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive behavior.

This longitudinal research examined a structural model of the self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive conduct. Perceived academic and self-regulatory efficacy concurrently and longitudinally deterred transgressiveness both directly and by fostering prosocialness and adherence to moral self-sanctions for harmful conduct. The impact of perceived social self-efficacy was mediated through prosocialness. Moral disengagement and prosocialness affected transgressiveness through the mediating influence of irascible affectivity and hostile rumination. Ruminative affectivity, in turn, both concurrently and longitudinally affected transgressiveness. Moral disengagement also contributed independently to variance in transgressiveness over time. This pattern of relations was obtained after controlling for prior transgressiveness. The structural model was replicated across gender and provided a better fit to the data than did several alternative models.

Corporate Transgressions through Moral Disengagement

Corporate transgression is a well-known phenomenon in today's business world. Some corporations are involved in violations of law and moral rules that produce organizational practices and products that take a toll on the public. Social cognitive theory of moral agency provides a conceptual framework for analyzing how otherwise pro-social managers adopt socially injurious corporate practices. This is achieved through selective disengagement of moral self-sanctions from transgressive conduct. This article documents moral disengagement practices in four famous cases of corporate transgressions and discusses some implications for business ethics on how to counteract organizational use of moral disengagement strategies.

Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities

Moral agency is manifested in both the power to refrain from behaving inhumanely and the proactive power to behave humanely. Moral agency is embedded in a broader sociocognitive self theory encompassing self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective, and self-regulatory mechanisms rooted in personal standards linked to self-sanctions. The self-regulatory mechanisms governing moral conduct do not come into play unless they are activated, and there are many psychosocial maneuvers by which moral self-sanctions are selectively disengaged from inhumane conduct. The moral disengagement may center on the cognitive restructuring of inhumane conduct into a benign or worthy one by moral justification, sanitizing language, and advantageous comparison; disavowal of a sense of personal agency by diffusion or displacement of responsibility; disregarding or minimizing the injurious effects of one's actions; and attribution of blame to, and dehumanization of, those who are victimized. Many inhumanities operate through a supportive network of legitimate enterprises run by otherwise considerate people who contribute to destructive activities by disconnected subdivision of functions and diffusion of responsibility. Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control, civilized life requires, in addition to humane personal standards, safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behavior and renounce cruelty.

Multifaceted Impact of Self-Efficacy Beliefs on Academic Functioning

This research analyzed the network of psychosocial influences through which efficacy beliefs affect academic achievement. Parents' sense of academic efficacy and aspirations for their children were linked to their children's scholastic achievement through their perceived academic capabilities and aspirations. Children's beliefs in their efficacy to regulate their own learning and academic attainments, in turn, contributed to scholastic achievement both independently and by promoting high academic aspirations and prosocial behavior and reducing vulnerability to feelings of futility and depression. Children's perceived social efficacy and efficacy to manage peer pressure for detrimental conduct also contributed to academic attainments but through partially different paths of affective and self-regulatory influence. The impact of perceived social efficacy was mediated through academic aspirations and a low level of depression. Perceived self-regulatory efficacy was related to academic achievement both directly and through adherence to moral self-sanctions for detrimental conduct and problem behavior that can subvert academic pursuits. Familial socioeconomic status was linked to children's academic achievement only indirectly through its effects on parental aspirations and children's prosocialness. The full set of self-efficacy, aspirational, and psychosocial factors accounted for a sizable share of the variance in academic achievement.