Research On Adolescent Moral Disengagement And Its Effect Factors

Moral disengagement is a cognitive mechanism of affecting private moralbehaviors, this mechanism can be divided into personal unmoral behavior andimmanent value system, in order to avoid obeying self justice which may be causedby violating immanent standards. The study of moral disengagement is a hot issue inthe field of adolescent moral developing, is also related to the current situation ofChinese adolescent moral developing and related problems. This study usesadolescent students as resource, adopting transverse researching design, andquestionnaire to collect information about cognitive factors(moral disengagement),privative factors(empathy), environmental factors(parenting style), and behaviorvariables(aggressive behavior), from the sample of1068students, who are fromGuangdong, Hunan, Hainan, Sichuan, and the age range is from12to18. Here are theconclusions from the study:1.For the study of adolescent moral disengagement, there are five factors, whichare moral justification, advantageous comparison, displacement or diffusion ofresponsibility, distortion of consequences, attribution of blame. The levels ofadolescent moral disengagement are very different among gender, age, and whether isthe only child, but is not so much different between student cadres. The gender is abig issue, the moral disengagement for boys is obviously more serious than girls.For moral justification and attribution of blame, the only child group has more effectthan the group which is not the only child.2.For empathy and aggressive behavior, there are dramatic differences betweengenders. The boys has less ability on empathy and feeling transfer than girls. Duringthe three levels of aggressive behaviors: for oral aggressive behavior, boys are moretrendy to be violence than girls; there is not big difference for self vent betweengenders; for empathy ability, the cohort of the only child has less power than thecohort of not the only child.3.Moral disengagement has negative relationship with empathy, but has positive relationship with aggressive behavior. The influence rate between moraldisengagement and aggressive behavior is21%, which means the moraldisengagement can predict aggressive behavior. The adolescent moral disengagementhas mesomeric effect between empathy and aggressive behavior.4.The relationship between adolescent moral disengagement and fathers’overprotection, mothers’ emotional caring. It has negative relationship with fathers’emotional caring, but has positive relationship with parents’ severe punishment, overinterfering, preference, and denying. The parenting styles can predict the moraldisengagement situation.