Abstract
How do individuals react to statements that condone acts of corruption and violence? This article contributes to the understanding of how people respond to discourses related to antisocial practices by examining how (1) information about the person who made the statement, and (2) the use of additional information as justification for the antisocial statement affect individuals’ agreement with this type of discourse. Relying on moral disengagement theory, we present an experimental study conducted with 487 high school students that assesses the level of agreement with statements made by Brazilian politicians that illustrate different mechanisms of moral disengagement. While overall results indicate low levels of agreement with these statements, comparisons across experimental groups suggest that providing case-based arguments as justification increases agreement with statements in favor of violence but reduces agreement with statements that condone acts of corruption.
Keywords
Adolescent; Cognition; Corruption; Moral development; Politics; Psychology; social
Note: The y-axis in each of the six graphs presents the percentage of the 149 respondents randomly assigned to the “Synthesis” experimental group who (dis)agree with statement. The five bars in each graph represent the response options in the following order: “completely disagree”, “somewhat disagree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “somewhat agree”, and “completely agree.”
Note: The filled triangle, filled circle, and empty circle represent the average predicted probability of a “Completely disagree” for conditions “Politicians”, “Media”, and “Synthesis”, respectively, while holding all other regression predictors at their means. The dashed lines indicate the confidence interval around the estimates with an alpha-level of 0.05. For the entire regression results and significance of beta predictors, see the online appendix H at<
Note: The filled triangle, filled circle, and empty circle represent the average predicted probability of a “Completely disagree” for conditions “Politicians”, “Media”, and “Synthesis”, respectively, while holding all other regression predictors at their means. “AF” in the figure stands for Armed Forces. The dashed lines indicate the confidence interval around the estimates with an alpha-level of 0.05. The number of high confidence respondents in the experimental conditions were 62 (Politicians), 60 (Media) and 66 (Synthesis), and lower level of confidence: 95 (Politicians), 91 (Media) and 75 (Synthesis). For the entire regression results and significance of beta predictors, see the online appendix J at<
Note: The filled triangle, filled circle, and empty circle represent the average predicted probability of a “Completely disagree” for conditions “Politicians”, “Media”, and “Synthesis”, respectively, while holding all other regression predictors at their means. The dashed lines indicate the confidence interval around the estimates with an alpha-level of 0.05. The number of high religiosity respondents in the experimental conditions were 71 (Politicians), 72 (Media) and 54 (Synthesis), and lower religiosity: 80 (Politicians), 91 (Media) and 89 (Synthesis). For the entire regression results and significance of beta predictors, see the online appendix J at<