CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 41Crime Patterns and InterventionsPsychology of Moral and Emotional JudgmentCrime, Deviance, and Social Control

The Nature and Role of Morality in Offending: A Moral Foundations Approach

Open access
Silver, Jason R., Silver, Eric·2021·Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency
DOI 10.1177/0022427820960201
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Objectives: Criminologists have long viewed morality as a critical element in offending. However, two factors limit the theoretical impact of prior work. First, no overarching framework for describing the nature and role of morality has been developed. Second, morality has been measured in a narrow manner as the extent to which individuals disapprove of particular acts of offending. To address these limitations, we examine the utility of a moral psychological framework—Moral Foundations Theory (MFT)—that fits remarkably well with the conceptions of morality found in criminological theorizing (i.e., that morality inhibits offending, has intuitive and pluralistic dimensions, and under certain circumstances may motivate offending). Methods: We use negative binomial regression to model self-reported counts of violence, group violence, theft, property damage, marijuana use, and illegal phone use while driving, in a large national sample of Icelandic youths (n = 10,710). Results: We find that individualizing moral intuitions centered on rights and autonomy and binding moral intuitions centered on social order and cohesion are uniquely associated with different types of offending and exhibit inhibiting or motivating effects depending on the outcome. Conclusion: MFT holds considerable promise as a framework for conducting criminological research on the relationship between morality and offending.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/0022427820960201

Cites

74 of 74 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The study joins a growing number within criminology that find MFT useful for explaining crime and justice-related outcomes.

    “Finally, our study joins a growing number within criminology which find that MFT is useful for explaining crime and justice-related outcomes (e.g., Burton et al., 2021;Nix et al., 2021;Silver & Silver, 2021;Silver et al., 2022;Vaughan et al., 2019).”

    From Rape or Homicide: Which Is Worse? (2024) · cites this paper as Silver & Silver, 2021

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 75 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 9

  1. [9]9. Bettache, Karim, Joubyr Amrani Idrissi, Ruben George Jonathan Amenyogbo, and Chi-Yue Chiu. 2019. "Monitoring Moral Virtue: When the Moral Trasgressions of Ingroup Members are Judged More Severely." Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 50(2):268-84.
  2. [21]21. Graham, Jesse, Jonathan Haid, Matt Motyl, Peter Meindl, Carol Iskiwitch, and Marlon Mooijman. 2018. "Moral Foundations Theory: On the Advantages of Moral Pluralism over Moral Monism." Pp. 211-222 in Atlas of Moral Psychol- ogy, edited by Kurt Gray and Jesse Graham. New York: The Guilford Press.
  3. [35]35. Hirschi, Travis. 1969. Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  4. [38]38. Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie and Nate C. Carnes. 2013. "Surveying the Moral Land- scape: Moral Motives and Group-Based Moralities." Personality and Social Psychology Review 17(3):219-36.
  5. [56]56. Reckless, Walter C. 1961 "A New Theory of Delinquency and Crime." Federal Probation 25(4): 42-46.
  6. [67]67. Sutherland, Edwin H. and Donald R. Cressey. 1978. Criminology. 10th ed. Phila- delphia: Lippincott.
  7. [80]80. Wikstro ¨m, Per-Olof H., Dietrich Oberwittler, Kyle Treiber, and Beth Hardie. 2012. Breaking Rules: The Social and Situation Dynamics of Young People's Urban Crime. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  8. [82]82. Jasmine R. Silver is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers Univer- sity-Newark. She received her PhD in Criminal Justice from the University at Albany, SUNY in 2018. Her research centers on morality and ideology as drivers of attitudes and behaviors in criminological contexts. Her published work appears in Social Forces, Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminol- ogy, Law and Society Review, and Law and Human Behavior, among other outlets.
  9. [83]83. Eric Silver is Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State University. His research focuses on deviance, morality, punishment, and stigma. He has also done work in violence and mental disorder, communities and crime, and actuarial risk assessment. His published work appears in Social Forces, Criminology, Social Problems, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, Jour- nal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Law and Human Behavior, and Deviant Behavior, among other outlets.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Silver, J. R., & Silver, E.
Affiliations
  • Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
  • Pennsylvania State University (US)
Corresponding author
Silver, Jason R.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2020-09-21
Volume
58
Issue
3
Pages
343-380
ISSN
  • 0022-4278 (ISSN-L)
  • 1552-731X
DOI
10.1177/0022427820960201
OpenAlex
W3088800051
Semantic Scholar
5b0b41cde80b70680bed7121faa2a7ee4e92e7eb
Cited by
41
References
75
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 5
FWCI
8.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (publishedVersion)
  • ScholarSphere (Penn State Libraries) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
Keywords
morality, offending, moral foundations, moral intuitions, individualizing moral foundations, binding moral foundations, juvenile delinquency, violence, collective violence, theft, property damage, cannabis use, Icelandic youth

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review