Relationships of moral judgement, emotional empathy and impulsivity to criminal behaviour in young and adult offenders

grantor: University of TorontoThe purpose of the present study was to investigate the relation of psychological variables of moral judgement, emotional empathy and impulsivity to criminal behaviour in young and adult offenders. Four groups of male subjects participated in this research: young offenders (n = 29), adult offenders (n = 27), young community (n = 26) and adult community (n = 24). The design involved comparisons of offenders and nonoffenders as well as subgroups of offenders based on age (young/adult), violence (non-violent/moderately violent/highly violent) and re-offending (first/repeat). It was hypothesized that: (1) offenders would differ from non-offenders by scoring lower on measures of moral judgment and empathy, while scoring higher on impulsivity measures; (2) adult offenders would score higher on measures of moral judgement than young offenders, but there would be no differences on empathy; (3) violent offenders would differ from non-violent offenders by scoring lower on empathy and moral judgement and higher on impulsivity; and finally, (4) repeat offenders would differ from first offenders by scoring lower on moral judgement and higher on impulsivity, with no differences on empathy. Moral judgement was assessed by the Defining Issue Test that utilizes Kohlberg's moral dilemmas. Self-report measures were administered to assess emotional empathy and impulsivity: the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy, the Impulse Expression scale of the Basic Personality Inventory and the IMP-30. The research data were analysed using multivariate and subsequently univariate statistics. Results indicate that: (1) as predicted, offenders were lower on moral judgement and higher on impulsivity than non-offenders. Contrary to the prediction, responses on the emotional empathy scale did not differentiate between the groups. In the offender group: (2) young offenders were lower on principled morality and higher on impulsivity than adult offenders; (3) there was a significant interaction effect between age and level of violence implying important differences between violent young and adult offenders; (4) contrary to the expectation, there was no difference between first and repeat offenders. The findings are discussed in relation to a model of human aggression that proposes a distinction between predatory and impulsive violence.Ph.D