Moral Development and Criminal Responsibility

Question 1

The construct of Morality – 3 components

Answer 1

o A) Moral reasoning – cognitive component
o B) moral self-evaluation – affective component
o C) Resistance to deviation – behavioural component

Question 2

• Piaget’s theory of moral reasoning

Answer 2

o Morality of constraint
 o Morality of cooperation
 o Intentions (8+) versus consequences (0-8 outcomes focus)
  Young kids can make decisions based on intention younger if intentions are particularly salient.

Question 3

• Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning

Answer 3

o Reasons people give for a behaviour rather than actions

Question 4

• Social Domain Theory: Moral versus conventional

Answer 4

o Yau & Smetana, 2003
 3-6 yr olds from HK
 Moral transgressions (hitting, teasing) worse than conventional ones (eating noodles with fingers) – and despite the collectivist culture believed personal choices (playmate, snack choice, and activity choice) were up to the child – however, for moral transgressions, unlike western children who thought these were bad, HK Chinese children focused on the intrinsic consequences of the acts for others’ welfare and fairness

Question 5

The development of self-evaluation

Answer 5

o A) Freud’s theory of conscience
o B) conditioning views of guilt and self-criticism
o C) Hoffman’s Emotion-attribution analysis of guilt
 (Kochanska et al., 2002: fearful temperament contributed to guilt proneness and in turn served to inhibit children’s proneness to violate rules
 Need to get children to feel empathy through inductive reasoning and then guilt rather than parental power-assertive actions.
 Explain to children their agency and thus responsibility
o D) Bandura’s agentic approach to self-regulation
 I) determinants of personal standards
 Ii) cognitive processes in self-evaluation
 Iii) Supports for self-regulatory systems

Question 6

• attribution theory of child behaviour

Answer 6

o Tell child they are kind, considerate children are more likely to live up to that expectation.

Question 7

• Child-rearing influences on resistance to deviation

Answer 7

o I) parental discipline
 External vs internalising morality
o Ii) modelling
 Much easier to influence children to do the wrong thing rather than the right thing.
 Best to demonstrate appropriate behaviour

Question 8

• Cognitive factors in resistance to deviation

Answer 8

o I) anticipated self-evaluations
 Moral disengagement - Halloween candy study
• Diffusion of responsibility
• Mask
• Or mirror lessened
o Ii) self-perceptions and other causal attributions
o Iii) cognitive representations of prohibited activities
o Iv) self-verbalisations

Question 9

Social cognitive theory Model of Self-regulation includes behaviour, person and the environment

Answer 9

o A) conception of moral agency in terms of self-regulatory mechanisms
o B) interplay between personal and social sanctions

Question 10

Criminal Responsibility

Answer 10

o In NSW, no child under the age of 10 can be guilty of an offence
o Between 10 and 14 yrs – rebuttable presumption -> lacks mens rea.
o Age of criminal responsibility
 1985 – UNCRC – recommend that ACR be set at no less than 12 yrs of age.

Question 11

Children’s Courts

Answer 11

o The child’s best interests
o Rehabilitation role – juvenile court was founded in 1899 – role to assess the needs of individual youth in order to rehabilitate them
o Increased punishment – issue of rights (issues of competence)
o Move to an adult court
o Competence to stand trial
 A) competence to assist counsel
 B) decisional competence
o Fried and Reppucci (2001)
 It has been argued that the age for informed consent, usually past 14 years, (e.g. medical treatments, abortion) should apply to criminal responsibility)

Question 12

• It has been argued that the informed-consent model is inadequate because it over-emphasises the ______ ______of decision making at the expense of ___-______ones

Answer 12

o Cognitive components, non-cognitive

Question 13

• Psycho-social maturity in the areas of responsibility, temperance, and perspective should be considered because

Answer 13

o adolescents are more subject to peer pressure,
o more likely to perceive themselves as invulnerable to risks,
o more heavily weight short-term than long-term benefits,
o temporal perspective continues to develop through early adulthood

Question 14

• Future consequences re adolescent criminal responsibility

Answer 14

o What are some of the things that might happen in this situation

Question 15

• Risk perception re adolescent criminal responsibility

Answer 15

o How likely do you think it is that you and your friends would get caught by the police?

Question 16

• Peer influence re adolescent criminal responsibility

Answer 16

o How likely do you think it is that your friends would make fun if you tried to walk away?

Question 17

• Adolescents in the middle age range (15-16yrs) indicated the lowest levels of ____ ____ ____ and ____ ____ ____ ____

Answer 17

o Future time orientation, resistance to peer influence

Question 18

• Most adolescents thought the crime was ____ ____ but varied as to whether they could have ____ ____ ____ ____

Answer 18

o Very serious, anticipated someone getting hurt

Question 19

• ____ ____ viewed the crime as less serious than white adolescents from the same SES level and also did not believe they could anticipate that someone would get hurt to the same extent as the white adolescents

Answer 19

o Minority adolescent

Question 20

• Also, _____ and ______were more likely than those in the middle (15-16) to believe that the youth should have anticipated that someone might get hurt

Answer 20

o Youngest, oldest

Question 21

• ____ adolescents anticipated more severe punishments than ____ones

Answer 21

o White, minority

Question 22

• Those who expected harsher punishment had ____ ____ ____ scores than those who expected less punishment

Answer 22

o Higher risk assessment

Question 23

• ____ and ____ ____ (SES was controlled) were important determinants of criminal understanding and decision making

Answer 23

o Age, ethnic status

Question 24

• Grisso et al (2003) - Found that adolescents below 15 performed more poorly than young adults in terms of adjudicative competence – influenced by psychosocial immaturity… (3)

Answer 24

o (future orientation, risk perception, and susceptibility to peer influence)

Question 25

• Adolescents (14-17) displayed less ____and ____ relative to university students (18-21), young adults (22-37) and adults (28-40) Modecki (2008)

Answer 25

o Responsibility, perspective taking

Question 26

• No ____ ____ differences between delinquent and non-delinquent youth Modecki (2008)

Answer 26

o Maturity judgement

Question 27

• 8 yr olds can differentiate ____ ____from criminal behaviour

Answer 27

o Childish mischief

Question 28

• 16 yrs old condone ____ ____ more than do 8 and 12 yr olds and adults

Answer 28

o Childish mischief

Question 29

• Criminal behaviour is governed by more than knowledge of right and wrong

Answer 29

o Justification of criminal behaviour
o Anticipated legal sanctions
o Peer reactions to criminal conduct
o Self-evaluative reactions

Question 30

• What is Retributive justice?

Answer 30

o – just deserts philosophy – equates sanctioning with punitive measures aimed at causing pain and discomfort to the offender and may fuel increasingly severe punishments (parallel with parents use of physical punishment

Question 31

• Restorative justice

Answer 31

o A more active role for the offender – rather than an adversarial process, the concern is with a broader relationship between offender, victim, and community

Question 32

• Self-sanction can be disengaged by:-

Answer 32

o 1. Reconstructing the conduct
o 2. Obscuring personal causal agency
o 3. Misrepresenting or disregarding the injurious consequences of one’s actions
o 4. Vilifying the recipients of maltreatment by blaming and devaluing them.

Question 33

• Selective activation and disengagement of moral control factors (8)

Answer 33

o Moral justification
o Euphemistic labelling
o Advantageous comparison
o Displacement of responsibility
o Diffusion of responsibility
o Dehumanisation
o Power of dehumanisation
o Disengagement of self-sanction and self-deception

Question 34

• If child understood that it was wrong it ____likelihood for delinquent behaviour

Answer 34

o Reduced

Question 35

• Academic efficacy and criminal behaviour

Answer 35

o Protective factor for criminal behaviour

Question 36

• Ability to resist ____ ____ linked to lower levels of delinquent behaviour

Answer 36

o Peer pressure