Acceptance of Moral and Legal Deviance

Deviance is the straying from cultural norms—these norms can be either moral or legal. Everybody reacts to deviance, mostly in negative, unaccepting ways. However, over time people have become more accepting of these deviant acts. (Wesselmann, Williams, Pryor, Eichler, Gill, & Hogue, 2014). There is a significant relationship between remembering an event that makes someone feel guilty and actually feeling guilt again. (Chiou, Yang, Yang, 2010). This shows that priming people to feel guilt is affective. People who are made to feel guilty tend to participate in riskier behaviors. (Kouchaki, Gino, Oveis, 2014). From this, it can be inferred that those who feel guilty are more likely to be deviant. Findings show that there is a significant difference between males and females likelihood to engage in deviant behaviors. (Barnett, Sanborn, & Shane, 2005). Our hypothesis was that the participant’s acceptance of moral or legal deviance would depend on their gender and the type of prime they received. If the participants were primed with legal guilt, we predicted they would be more accepting of legal deviance. If the participants were primed with moral guilt, we predicted they would be more accepting of moral deviance. Overall, we predicted that males would be more accepting of deviant acts, both moral and legal