The Developmental Characteristics Of Adolescent Morality And Its Relationship With Aggression And Social Appreciation

Moral disengagement is the specific cognitive tendency of individual,which plays a key role on individual's moral behaviors(such as prosocial behavior)and immoral behaviors(such as aggressive behavior).It can make use of its eight mechanisms to make moral self-adjustment function fail selectively,thereby explaining why normal people do immoral behavior without obvious guilt and self accusation.Since the concept was put forward,many researches have been initiated.The earliest and also the most important concern was its impact on adolescents' general aggressive behavior.What were worthy of further exploration: Which dimensions of moral disengagement affect adolescents' aggressive behavior? Do they have the same relationship with implicit aggression? Whether social desirability could moderate the relationship between the two.The present study used a sample of 660 students who were recruited from grade six to nine in a primary school and a middle school,and self-report questionnaires were used to collect the relevant data to explore the relationship between the eight mechanisms of adolescent's moral disengagement and the two types of aggression(explicit aggression and implicit aggression).Meanwhile,the moderating role of social desirability in this relationship was also investigated.This study showed the following conclusions:There was significant gender difference in distortion of consequences of adolescents' moral disengagement,and the score of boys' distortion was significantly higher than that of girls.There were significant grade differences in the 7 factors of adolescent's moral disengagement : on moral justification and advantageous comparison factors,Grade 8 and grade 9 were significantly higher than grade 6;on euphemistic labeling factor,8 grade was significantly higher than grade 6,and 9 was significantly higher than the grades of 6,7,8;on diffusion of responsibility grade 7 was significantly higher than that of 8 and 9 grade;on the blame attribution,the grade 7 was significantly higher than that of the grades of 6,8 and 9;on the distortion of consequences factor grade 7 was significantly higher that of grade 6 and grade 8;on the factor of dehumanization,grade 6 and grade 9 was significantly higher than grade 8.There was a significant positive correlation between the all the factors of moral disengagement and explicit aggression and implicit aggression,but negatively correlated with social desirability.Moral justification,euphemistic labeling and displacement of responsibility could significantly and positively predict the adolescent's explicit aggression.The two factors of moral justification and euphemistic labeling could significantly and positively predict implicit aggression of the adolescent.Social desirability could played a moderating role in the relationship between displacement of responsibility and adolescent's explicit aggression and the relationship between moral justification and adolescent's implicit aggression.Under high social desirability,moral disengagement has no significant effect on adolescent aggression.