Moral Disengagement in Adolescent Offenders: Its Relationship with Antisocial Behavior and Its Presence in Offenders of the Law and School Norms

• Published in: Children (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 1; p. 70
• Main Authors: Agudelo Rico, Daniela, Panesso Giraldo, Carolina, Arbeláez Caro, Joan Sebastian, Cabrera Gutiérrez, Germán, Isaac, Valeria, Escobar, María Josefina, Herrera, Eduar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01.01.2024
• Subjects: adolescent lawbreakers; adolescent legal offenders; adolescent school norm offenders; aggression; Analysis; antisocial behavior; Antisocial personality disorder; Behavior; Bullying; Child development; Criminal liability; Dehumanization; Emotional regulation; Empathy; Ethical aspects; Laws, regulations and rules; moral disengagement; Norms; Sex crimes; Social order; Society; Teenagers; Youth; Colombia; adolescent school norm offenders; adolescent legal offenders; aggression; moral disengagement; adolescent lawbreakers; antisocial behavior
• ISSN: 2227-9067; 2227-9067
• DOI: 10.3390/children11010070

This study focuses on understanding the relationship between moral disengagement mechanisms in adolescents who engage in law-breaking activities and those who violate school norms. To do so, we administered the Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement Scale (MMDS), which evaluates moral justification, euphemistic labeling, advantageous comparison, deflection of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences, dehumanization, and attribution of blame, to 366 adolescents (60.1% males ( = 220) and 39.9% females ( = 146)). Our results confirmed the hypothesis that law-breaking adolescents presented a higher degree of moral disengagement than those adolescents who violate school norms. Additionally, we found that adolescents who violated school norms displayed significantly higher levels of dehumanization than the controls, and law-breaking adolescents obtained the highest score in this domain. Our findings allow us to suggest that the presence of the dehumanization mechanism in adolescents who violate school norms could be used as an early indicator of the emergence of antisocial behaviors, since this was the only component of moral disengagement that significantly differentiated this group from the controls in the study.