Fathers' moral disengagement and mothers' moral disengagement were examined as the two moderators of the adverse effect of childhood maltreatment on adolescents' moral disengagement and cyberbullying ...perpetration. Participants were 412 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 13.53 years, SD = 0.91) and their fathers and mothers. Results indicated that adolescents with high childhood maltreatment were more likely to cyberbully others, and this relation was mediated by adolescents' moral disengagement. Furthermore, fathers' moral disengagement moderated the relation between childhood maltreatment and adolescents' moral disengagement only, but not the relation between childhood maltreatment and cyberbullying perpetration. Mothers' moral disengagement moderated the relation between childhood maltreatment and cyberbullying perpetration only, but not the relation between childhood maltreatment and adolescents' moral disengagement.
•Adolescents with high childhood maltreatment were more likely to cyberbully others.•This relation was mediated by adolescents' moral disengagement.•Fathers' moral disengagement moderated the relation between childhood maltreatment and adolescents' moral disengagement.•Mothers' moral disengagement moderated the relation between childhood maltreatment and cyberbullying perpetration.
Moral disengagement was initially conceptualized as a process through which people reconstrue unethical behaviors, with the effect of deactivating self-sanctions and thereby clearing the way for ...ethical transgressions. Our article challenges how researchers now conceptualize moral disengagement. The current literature is overly liberal, in that it mixes two related but distinct constructs—process moral disengagement and the propensity to morally disengage—creating ambiguity in the findings. It is overly conservative, as it adopts a challengeable classification scheme of “four points in moral self-regulation” and perpetuates defining moral disengagement via a set of eight psychological mechanisms, narrowing our understanding of the phenomenon. To address these problems, we propose to define process moral disengagement intensionally (specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of the term) as intrapsychic cognitive reasoning processes through which people selectively reconstrue a moral judgment “behavior B by actor A is morally wrong” and shift it toward becoming “behavior B is not morally wrong” or “actor A is not responsible for behavior B.” This definition achieves disambiguation and increased concept clarity. We leverage the definition to motivate a classification scheme for psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement along two dimensions—reconstruing morality and reconstruing agency—and to initiate an open inventory of psychological mechanisms that specify how process moral disengagement operates.
•Moral disengagement mediated the relation of self-efficacy to willingness to tell antisocial lies.•Children who believed they were good at lying demonstrated a greater willingness to tell antisocial ...lies.•Social Cognitive Theory may provide a framework to understand the psychosocial mechanisms involved in the developmental trajectories of truth- and lie-telling.
This study examined a proposed model of relations among lie-telling self-efficacy, moral disengagement, and willingness to tell antisocial lies among children and adolescents. Children and adolescents aged 6 to 15 years completed measures of lie-telling self-efficacy and moral disengagement. They also read vignettes about a character committing a transgression and telling a lie to conceal the transgression. For each vignette, children and adolescents made a hypothetical decision about telling the truth or a lie if they were in the character’s position to assess their lie-telling propensity. Lie-telling self-efficacy was related to willingness to tell lies, and this relationship was mediated by moral disengagement. Children and adolescents with higher lie-telling self-efficacy had higher moral disengagement, and those who had higher moral disengagement were more willing to tell antisocial lies. Overall, results support Bandura’s social cognitive theory as a framework for understanding the psychosocial mechanisms underlying attitudes toward lie-telling. Moreover, these findings suggest that interventions to address problematic lie-telling behavior should focus on children’s and adolescents’ use of moral disengagement mechanisms.
Despite their potential to reduce or remedy the impact of cyberbullying, most bystanders do not intervene in witnessed incidents. Social cognitive theory suggests this response is due to interactive ...influences of personal, behavioural and environmental factors, and further shaped by the social and cultural context. However, this has not been empirically tested in cyberbullying bystanders. In this study, 563 grade 7 and 9 students completed a survey to examine the associations between intervention and morality, at the individual and peer-group levels. Results revealed that intervention was significantly associated with gender, grade, previous experiences of cyberbullying, and the interaction between individual and collective moral variables. More frequent intervention was reported by females, grade 7 students, and those with more experience as victims and witnesses of cyberbullying. Finally, collective moral disengagement moderated the effects of individual morality. In disengaged classes, higher moral standards were associated with more frequent intervention; furthermore, in extremely morally disengaged classes, higher moral disengagement was associated with more frequent intervention. These results suggest that consistent with social cognitive theory, individuals' perceptions of social norms moderate the influence of individual morality on intervention.
•Peer interactions are shaped by complex and interactive influences.•Females and younger students intervene more frequently in cyberbullying.•Victimisation and witnessing are positively associated with intervention.•Collective morality moderates the effects of individual morality on intervention.
Honesty is a significant issue being investigated in the academic world due to the prevalence of dishonesty such as cheating and plagiarism among students. This research aims to examine the ...relationship between students' honesty and their moral disengagement and incivility perspectives. A correlational study was conducted with 636 students from two junior high schools in Central Java using cluster sampling. Participants completed the academic integrity scale, moral disengagement scale, and incivility scale. The results indicated that moral disengagement and incivility significantly predict students' honesty, as confirmed by the significant correlation (R = .41, F (13,622) = 9.57, p < .01). The study's results suggest that factors such as euphemistic labeling, dehumanization, unintentional incivility, and intentional incivility contribute to students' honesty. The findings of this study highlight the importance of addressing moral disengagement and incivility in educational settings. To promote honesty and positive behavior among students, educational institutions may consider implementing programs that address these factors and encourage positive moral reasoning and respectful behavior. Further discussion of these results is provided in the study.
The lack of defending in bystanders to cyberbullying has been linked with the process of moral disengagement, which allows bystanders to justify the morality of their inactivity after witnessing a ...cyberbullying episode. Context is central in this process as individuals assess the specific contextual cues present within each episode, and it is this assessment that informs their subsequent behavior. Despite the importance of context in moral disengagement, researchers have yet to take this factor into account. To address this gap in literature, the present study examines the role of contextual factors on moral disengagement in specific cyberbullying episodes, and how this process influences cyber defending. This study also consolidates inconsistent results from studies examining moral disengagement and defending by examining defending as a multifaceted construct involving aggressive and constructive defending. To examine these issues, 540 Grade 7 and 9 students completed a survey assessing moral disengagement and defending self-efficacy in two cyberbullying scenarios. Results revealed that in both scenarios, contextualized moral disengagement is shown to be associated with aggressive and constructive defending self-efficacy above and beyond general moral disengagement. Higher levels of contextual moral disengagement are also related to greater aggressive defending self-efficacy whereas lower contextual moral disengagement is linked with greater pro-social defending self-efficacy. These results call for an increased focus on contextual factors when examining morality in cyberbullying and highlight the need to differentiate between pro-social and aggressive forms of defending.
•Contextual moral disengagement is uniquely linked with cyber defending self-efficacy beyond general moral disengagement.•Cyber defending can be viewed as a multidimensional construct.•Moral disengagement is differentially linked with different types of defending.
The aim of this study was to examine whether collective moral disengagement and authoritative teaching at the classroom level, and student-teacher relationship quality at the individual level, ...predicted individual moral disengagement among pre-adolescent students 1 year later. In this short-term longitudinal study, 1,373 students from 108 classrooms answered a web-based questionnaire on tablets during school, once in fifth grade (T1) and once in sixth grade (T2). The results showed, after controlling for T1 moral disengagement, gender, and immigrant background, that students with better student-teacher relationship quality at T1 were more inclined to score lower on moral disengagement at T2, whereas students in classrooms with higher levels of collective moral disengagement at T1 were more inclined to score higher on moral disengagement at T2. In addition, both collective moral disengagement and authoritative teaching were found to moderate the associations between student-teacher relationship quality at T1 and moral disengagement at T2. These findings underscore the importance of fostering positive relationships between students and teachers, as well as minimizing collective moral disengagement in classrooms. These measures may prevent the potential escalation of moral disengagement in a negative direction.
Workplace bullying is an ethical concern, suggesting that its occurrence is connected to the ethical characteristics of organizations and employees. Drawing from routine activity theory, this ...investigation explored proposed relationships among multiple measures of organizational ethics, individual ethics, and perceived bullying. Two separate investigations used time-lagged data collected from 210 business professionals in Study 1 and 210 individuals in Study 2. Results indicated that ethics training and perceived corporate social responsibility were positively related to moral attentiveness, perceived corporate ethical values were negatively related to moral attentiveness and moral disengagement, and attentiveness and disengagement were variably and positively related to perceived bullying. Perceived social responsibility and ethical values were also variably and negatively related to bullying. The findings suggest that corporate practices encouraging employee ethics should reduce workplace bullying.
•Based on routine activity theory, organizational and individual ethics should impact bullying perceptions and experiences.•Ethics training and perceived social responsibility were positively related to moral attentiveness.•Perceived ethical values were negatively related to moral attentiveness and moral disengagement.•Attentiveness and disengagement were variably and positively related to bullying.•Social responsibility/ethical values were variably and positively related to bullying.
The winners of the 2017 World Series were found guilty of illegally using electronic devices to steal the signs of their opponents. Many but not all sport fans negatively reacted to this cheating ...incident. We relied on the model of excellencism and perfectionism to determine if perfection strivers are less unfavorable toward electronic sign stealing (cheating) compared with excellence strivers. Sport fans (
N
= 321) completed a measure of excellencism and perfectionism. We used three different approaches to measure attitudes toward electronic sign stealing in baseball. Results of a multivariate multiple regression showed that sport fans who are perfection strivers held more favorable attitudes toward electronic sign stealing compared with excellence strivers. Perfection strivers also reported higher moral disengagement and winning-at-all-cost mentality. These findings are insightful because they indicate that perfectionistic standards significantly relate to sport cheating-related attitudes once we separate excellencism from perfectionism.
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