Journal of Abnormal Child Psyehology, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1976
The Cheating and Intention of a Partner as Determinants of Evaluative Decisions Among Juvenile Offenders Jeffrey C. Savitsky, 1 Roberta Muskin, Danita Czyzewski, and Jerry Eckert Purdue University
Male juvenile offenders were asked to evaluate the work o f an experimental partner (confederate) who completed a work task four times. The work partner cheated on two trials and did not cheat on two trials while working for a charity (one cheat and one noncheat trial) or for selfish gain (one cheat and one noncheat trial). It was found that subjects rated the work done on cheating trials lower than work done on noncheating trials. In addition, subjects shared less reward money on cheating trials relative to noncheating trials. However, the intentions o f the confederate, defined as the reward recipient, failed to affect subjects' judgments. These results were described as supporting previous studies which have indicated that delinquents fail to take account o f others' intentions when making moral judgments. The apparent increase of illegal behavior among juveniles has precipitated increasing research scrutiny of this problem. One plausible hypothesis, which may account in part for the behavior of persistent adolescent offenders, is that this group demonstrates inferior, or less developed, moral reasoning, which is characterized by a lessened awareness of others' intentions. The present study was conducted in an attempt to assess this hypothesis within a more involving situation than previously used. Piaget (1932) observed that young children judge moral transgressions using an objective orientation, but that with age, children shift toward a more subjective viewpoint. While the young child judges the seriousness of an act as Manuscript received in final form February 20~ 1976. Requests for reprints should be sent to Jeffrey C. Savitsky, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. 235 9 1976 Plenum Publishing Corporation, 227 West 17th Street, New Y o r k , N.Y. 10011. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
236
Savitsky, Muskin, Czyzewski, and Eckert
stemming from the amount of damage caused by that act, the more mature individual judges an act on the basis of the intentions of the offender. A number of researchers have reported results which support these age-related changes in moral reasoning (e.g., Turiel, 1966). In addition, researchers who have compared adolescent delinquents--presumably a group with deficient moral developm e n t - with nondelinquent adolescents report that indeed moral reasoning is less developed among delinquents than among nondelinquents (Hudgins & Prentice, 1973). Kohlberg (1958) found, in one study, that the moral judgment of 15-year-old delinquents was equivalent in nature to moral reasoning in most 8- and 10-year-old children. Several researchers have provided evidence that moral orientation can be changed. Thus, Bandura and McDonald (1963) attempted to shift the moral orientation of preschoolers toward greater or less use of intentionality through modeling and social rewards. This study wns replicated by Cowan, Langer, Heavencick, and Nathason (1969), with both studies indicating that young children can indeed learn new moral orientations. A similar study (Prentice, 1972) found that delinquent adolescents also made greater use of intentionality in their moral judgments when exposed to more mature decisions expressed by a model. However, a later study (McCann & Prentice, 1973) found that delinquents shifted their moral orientations toward greater use of intentionality even without detailed instruction. In this study, adolescent delinquents were simply offered monetary rewards for making responses "similar to adults." The implication of this finding would seem to be that delinquents may indeed understand, or have access to, more mature methods of moral reasoning but that they use these mature methods only when it is expedient for them to do so. A consistent feature of studies that have related moral reasoning with delinquency has been the use of interview methodologies. Thus, subjects are typically read several hypothetical situations which describe a number of offenses. These stories vary both in the amount of damage caused by the offender and in the described intentions of the offender. In essence these studies have presented subjects with verbal and noninvolving situations while asking a projective type response. The present study was done in an attempt to assess the generality of previous studies, which have used verbal descriptions, to situations in which adolescent offenders believe that they are working with a partner who either does or does not cheat while completing the task. The intentions of the partner, actually an experimental confederate, were varied by informing the subject that the partner was working either for his own gain or for a charitable cause.
At least two previous studies have studied the effects of a work partner's intentions on evaluative ratings during an apparently real interaction. Garrett and Libby (1973) report that nondelinquent adolescents do assess the intentions of a work partner before sharing rewards. Similarly, Savitsky and Babl (in press) found that college students punished a work partner differentially depending on
Evaluative Decisions Among Delinquents
237
the recipient of rewards gained by the partner's cheating. That is, these subjects administered more intense punishment to partners who cheated, relative to partners who did not cheat, but the apparent intentions of the cheating partner modified this effect such that partners who were cheating f o r a charity, a good cause, were not punished as harshly as partners who cheated for selfish gain. It was expected that adolescent offenders would also hold more negative opinions about cheating relative to noncheating, but it was also hypothesized that the intentions of a partner, whether he cheated for a good cause or selfish gain, would not alter subjects' attitudes.
METHOD
Subjects Subjects used in this study were male juvenile offenders (8 black and 11 white) incarcerated in a large, short-term detention facility. All of the boys had been referred at least twice to the juvenile court on a variety of charges which ranged from truancy and drug usage to burglary and auto theft. As a group, these boys had been incarcerated an average of 3.84 separate times. Their ages ranged from 14 to 17 years with an average age of 15.42 years. Procedure Subjects were individually asked by a female experimenter to participate in a research study. All subjects agreed, and each was then individually conducted to a waiting room area where he met an experimental accomplice who was introduced as another detainee. Subjects were led to believe that the confederate had only recently been admitted to the detention center and was still housed in an admission unit. The confederate consistently dressed in the standard clothing issued all detainees and furthered the deception by asking the subjects several questions about conditions in the institution. Both subject and accomplice were then led to a small room which contained a desk and a TV monitor. During this transition, the subject also passed a second room which he could see contained a TV camera and a desk. The experimenter then explained to both subject and confederate that the present research was attempting to assess the skill of boys in the detention center at a specific work task and that one of them would complete the task while the other would judge how well the worker had done. Both subject and accomplice were shown an enlarged version of the digit substitution subscale of the WISC. In addition, the experimenter withdrew a scoring stencil from a large envelope and showed the boys how the test could be quickly scored. The confederate was then chosen to be the
238
Savitsky, Muskin, Czyzewski, and Eckert
"worker" while the subject was told he would be rating how well his partner did. They were told that they would do the task four times and that the rater would make two judgments for each trial. First, the subject was to rate how well his partner had worked, using a 6-point scale which ranged from 1, not at all, to 6, very hard. Secondly, the subject was to share $.08 with his partner on two of the trials. Subjects were told to give their partner what he deserved for his work on these trials and to keep the rest. However, for the remaining two trials, money earned by the worker, as decided by the subject, would go to charity, while the remainder would be unused. The confederate was then taken to an adjoining room to work, "away from interruptions," in front of the TV camera while the subject could see and hear him over the TV monitor. Once in the next room, the experimenter again explained the task which the confederate could now hear and see over the monitor, and added that there was a 1-minute time limit and that a clock on the confederate's desk would ring when the time elapsed. The experimenter then left the room, instructing the worker not to begin until she had returned, but she also left the large envelope containing the scoring stencil behind. The experimenter rejoined the subject, answered all remaining questions, and added that while the worker believed that he was working for charity, actually they would both get to keep all money earned on each of the four trials. All subjects then completed four trials. Each trial was begun by the experimenter, who first gave the subject a new rating sheet and eight pennies while informing him either that the worker was working for himself or believed that he was working for charity. The experimenter then rejoined the confederate, told him he was working for charity or for himself, started the clock, and left the room.
The order of trims was randomized over subjects according to a prearranged schedule such that the confederate cheated on one charity and on one self-gain trial, and did not cheat on one charity and one self-gain trial. Cheating occurred midway through a trial when the confederate removed the scoring stencil from its envelope, completed the task, and replaced the stencil before the clock sounded. Following the final trial, subjects were individually questioned about their beliefs about the purpose of the study, who their partner worked for, their attitudes toward their partner, and, finally, whether or not cheating had occurred.
RESULTS Rating and Sharing The rating and sharing dependent measures were each analyzed in separate 2 • 2 analyses of variance with the factors of presence of cheating and intention
Evaluative Decisions Among Delinquents
239
(reward recipient) with both factors within-subjects variables. These analyses yielded parallel results in that each indicated a significant main effect for the cheating factor: F(1, 18) = 16.03, p < .005; F(1, 18) = 12.12,p < .005 for the rating and sharing measures, respectively. In each case, noncheating trials were viewed more positively such that noncheating work performance received higher ratings (means = 4.86 and 3.36 for noncheating and cheating trials, respectively) and were given a larger share of the reward money (means = 4.84 and 3.60 for noncheating and cheating trials, respectively). However, there were only negligible effects associated with the intentionality factor (p > .55) and the cheating • intentionality interactions (p > .33). A second analysis was performed on each of the two dependent measures. These were 2 • 2 analyses of variance, again with the factors of cheating and intention, but in contrast to the previous analyses, these were now completely between-subjects factors utilizing only the scores of each subject's first trial. This was done so that effects of each of the independent variables could be assessed without possible intertrial interactions. These analyses revealed near-significant main effects for the cheating variable: F(1, 15)= 4.10, p < .06;/7(1, 15)= 3.30, p < .09 for the rating and sharing measures, respectively. Again, noncheaters were rated more positively (means = 5.0 and 3.52 for noncheaters and cheaters, respectively) and given a greater share of the reward (means = 5.0 and 3.73 for noncheaters and cheaters, respectively). While these differences are only trends, they do support the previous within-subjects analyses in that significance was reduced since the between-subjects analyses were based on a relatively small number of subjects per cell (between four and six). Effects due to the reward recipient factor and the reward recipient • cheating interaction were again negligible, p > .56 and p > .22, respectively. Postexperimental Questionnaire Analysis of the postexperimental questionnaire indicated that there was little suspicion about the experimental manipulations. When asked about the purpose of the study, all subjects either gave vague descriptions or simply said they did not know. All subjects remembered that their partners believed they had worked both for their own gain and for a charity. Also, only one subject, when asked directly, failed to admit that their partner had cheated. Of the remaining 18 subjects, 15 reported seeing two instances of cheating while 3 subjects reported seeing cheating occur once. In addition, postexperimental interviewing indicated that subjects had accepted the confederate as a fellow detainee housed in the intake unit. The fact that the confederate was a new and unknown person did not arouse suspicion, apparently because these boys were housed in units which were not allowed to mingle with the intake unit. Further, since the majority of boys housed in the intake unit are not transferred to the
240
Savitsky, Muskin, Czyzewski, and Eekert
regular units, but are instead released after several days, it was not unusual to meet previously unknown detainees.
DISCUSSION
The results of this study offered considerable support for previous studies which have found the moral reasoning of delinquents lacking in the awareness of an offender's intentions. That is, subjects in the present study failed to modify their opinions of work trials when the reasons for cheating were either laudable or selfish. Instead, the delinquent boys in the present study only made use of the more obvious and concrete norm regarding cheating behavior. Apparently these boys believed that cheating is bad, regardless of the reasons for this behavior. The present study also served to provide evidence of the generality of previous research which has related moral reasoning with delinquency. That is, Hudgins and Prentice (1973) have noted that the bulk of studies in this area ask subjects to make judgments while they are uninvolved raters responding to hypothetical situations. In contrast, the present study placed subjects into a situation which they apparently believed, judging from their postexperimental questionnaire responses, was actually a bona fide instance of cheating. Further, subjects stood to earn or lose money via their decisions. The present study would therefore seem to reflect more closely on situations in which a delinquent may be an observer of actual behaviors rather than a passive listener to a story. One interesting finding is that delinquents apparently disapprove of cheating. Yet previous studies have shown that delinquents cheat more than normals (Heisler, 1974; Hill, 1934). Several possible explanations may account for this apparent contradiction. First, since normal subjects were not included in the present study, the possibility remains that delinquents may not be as truly negative about cheating as are nondelinquents. A second possibility is, however, that while delinquents are critical of others cheating they may not evaluate their own deceptive behaviors in quite the same way. Perhaps delinquent adolescents fail to give credence to the intentions of other offenders while they remain capable of accepting their own intentions. Further research, in which delinquent subjects evaluate their own deceptive behaviors, would seem necessary to resolve this issue. In summary, evidence from this and other studies suggests that delinquent male adolescents largely ignore the intentions of others. This finding seemingly offers considerable power for explaining the persistence of delinquent behavior among certain children. That is, faced with an aversive situation, a delinquent may evaluate this frustration only in terms of its consequences for him on a superficial level and not with regard to the intentions of the frustrator. A lack of awareness of others' intentions thereby disallows modes of conflict resolution,
Evaluative Decisions Among Delinquents
241
such as rationalization, w h i c h m a y preclude the necessity o f m o r e overt retaliation.
REFERENCES Bandura, A., & McDonald, F. J. Influence of social reinforcements and the behavior of models in shaping children's moral judgments. Journal o f Abnormal Psychology, 1963, 67, 279-281. Cowan, P. A., Langer, J., Heavencick, J., & Nathason, M. Social learning and Piaget's cognitive theory of moral development. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1969, 11, 261-274. Garrett, J., & Libby, W. L. Intention and chance reward allocations in the dyad as determinants of equity. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 28, 21-27. Heisler, G. Ways to deter law violators: Effects of levels of threat and vicarious punishment on cheating. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1974, 42, 577-582. Hill, G. Cheating among delinquent boys. JournalofJuvenile Research, 1934, 18, 169-174. Hudgins, W., & Prentice, N. M. Moral judgments in delinquents and nondelinquent adolescents and their mothers. Journal o f Abnormal Psychology, 1973, 82, 145-152. Kohlberg, L. The development o f modes o f moral thinking and choice in the years 10 to 15. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1958. McCann, D. C., & Prentice, N. M. The facilitating effects of money and moral set on the moral judgment of adolescent delinquents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1973, 82, 81-84. Piaget, J. The moralfudgment o f the child. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1932. Prentice, N. M. The influence of live and symbolic modeling on promoting moral judgments of adolescent juvenile delinquents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1972, 80, 157-161. Savitsky, J. C., & Babl, J. Cheating, intention, and punishment from an equity theory perspective. Journal o f Research in Personality, in press. Turiel, E. An experimental test of the sequentiality of developmental stages in the child's moral judgments. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1966, 3, 611-618.
The Cheating and Intention of a Partner as Determinants of Evaluative Decisions Among Juvenile Offenders Jeffrey C. Savitsky, 1 Roberta Muskin, Danita Czyzewski, and Jerry Eckert Purdue University
Male juvenile offenders were asked to evaluate the work o f an experimental partner (confederate) who completed a work task four times. The work partner cheated on two trials and did not cheat on two trials while working for a charity (one cheat and one noncheat trial) or for selfish gain (one cheat and one noncheat trial). It was found that subjects rated the work done on cheating trials lower than work done on noncheating trials. In addition, subjects shared less reward money on cheating trials relative to noncheating trials. However, the intentions o f the confederate, defined as the reward recipient, failed to affect subjects' judgments. These results were described as supporting previous studies which have indicated that delinquents fail to take account o f others' intentions when making moral judgments. The apparent increase of illegal behavior among juveniles has precipitated increasing research scrutiny of this problem. One plausible hypothesis, which may account in part for the behavior of persistent adolescent offenders, is that this group demonstrates inferior, or less developed, moral reasoning, which is characterized by a lessened awareness of others' intentions. The present study was conducted in an attempt to assess this hypothesis within a more involving situation than previously used. Piaget (1932) observed that young children judge moral transgressions using an objective orientation, but that with age, children shift toward a more subjective viewpoint. While the young child judges the seriousness of an act as Manuscript received in final form February 20~ 1976. Requests for reprints should be sent to Jeffrey C. Savitsky, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. 235 9 1976 Plenum Publishing Corporation, 227 West 17th Street, New Y o r k , N.Y. 10011. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
236
Savitsky, Muskin, Czyzewski, and Eckert
stemming from the amount of damage caused by that act, the more mature individual judges an act on the basis of the intentions of the offender. A number of researchers have reported results which support these age-related changes in moral reasoning (e.g., Turiel, 1966). In addition, researchers who have compared adolescent delinquents--presumably a group with deficient moral developm e n t - with nondelinquent adolescents report that indeed moral reasoning is less developed among delinquents than among nondelinquents (Hudgins & Prentice, 1973). Kohlberg (1958) found, in one study, that the moral judgment of 15-year-old delinquents was equivalent in nature to moral reasoning in most 8- and 10-year-old children. Several researchers have provided evidence that moral orientation can be changed. Thus, Bandura and McDonald (1963) attempted to shift the moral orientation of preschoolers toward greater or less use of intentionality through modeling and social rewards. This study wns replicated by Cowan, Langer, Heavencick, and Nathason (1969), with both studies indicating that young children can indeed learn new moral orientations. A similar study (Prentice, 1972) found that delinquent adolescents also made greater use of intentionality in their moral judgments when exposed to more mature decisions expressed by a model. However, a later study (McCann & Prentice, 1973) found that delinquents shifted their moral orientations toward greater use of intentionality even without detailed instruction. In this study, adolescent delinquents were simply offered monetary rewards for making responses "similar to adults." The implication of this finding would seem to be that delinquents may indeed understand, or have access to, more mature methods of moral reasoning but that they use these mature methods only when it is expedient for them to do so. A consistent feature of studies that have related moral reasoning with delinquency has been the use of interview methodologies. Thus, subjects are typically read several hypothetical situations which describe a number of offenses. These stories vary both in the amount of damage caused by the offender and in the described intentions of the offender. In essence these studies have presented subjects with verbal and noninvolving situations while asking a projective type response. The present study was done in an attempt to assess the generality of previous studies, which have used verbal descriptions, to situations in which adolescent offenders believe that they are working with a partner who either does or does not cheat while completing the task. The intentions of the partner, actually an experimental confederate, were varied by informing the subject that the partner was working either for his own gain or for a charitable cause.
At least two previous studies have studied the effects of a work partner's intentions on evaluative ratings during an apparently real interaction. Garrett and Libby (1973) report that nondelinquent adolescents do assess the intentions of a work partner before sharing rewards. Similarly, Savitsky and Babl (in press) found that college students punished a work partner differentially depending on
Evaluative Decisions Among Delinquents
237
the recipient of rewards gained by the partner's cheating. That is, these subjects administered more intense punishment to partners who cheated, relative to partners who did not cheat, but the apparent intentions of the cheating partner modified this effect such that partners who were cheating f o r a charity, a good cause, were not punished as harshly as partners who cheated for selfish gain. It was expected that adolescent offenders would also hold more negative opinions about cheating relative to noncheating, but it was also hypothesized that the intentions of a partner, whether he cheated for a good cause or selfish gain, would not alter subjects' attitudes.
METHOD
Subjects Subjects used in this study were male juvenile offenders (8 black and 11 white) incarcerated in a large, short-term detention facility. All of the boys had been referred at least twice to the juvenile court on a variety of charges which ranged from truancy and drug usage to burglary and auto theft. As a group, these boys had been incarcerated an average of 3.84 separate times. Their ages ranged from 14 to 17 years with an average age of 15.42 years. Procedure Subjects were individually asked by a female experimenter to participate in a research study. All subjects agreed, and each was then individually conducted to a waiting room area where he met an experimental accomplice who was introduced as another detainee. Subjects were led to believe that the confederate had only recently been admitted to the detention center and was still housed in an admission unit. The confederate consistently dressed in the standard clothing issued all detainees and furthered the deception by asking the subjects several questions about conditions in the institution. Both subject and accomplice were then led to a small room which contained a desk and a TV monitor. During this transition, the subject also passed a second room which he could see contained a TV camera and a desk. The experimenter then explained to both subject and confederate that the present research was attempting to assess the skill of boys in the detention center at a specific work task and that one of them would complete the task while the other would judge how well the worker had done. Both subject and accomplice were shown an enlarged version of the digit substitution subscale of the WISC. In addition, the experimenter withdrew a scoring stencil from a large envelope and showed the boys how the test could be quickly scored. The confederate was then chosen to be the
238
Savitsky, Muskin, Czyzewski, and Eckert
"worker" while the subject was told he would be rating how well his partner did. They were told that they would do the task four times and that the rater would make two judgments for each trial. First, the subject was to rate how well his partner had worked, using a 6-point scale which ranged from 1, not at all, to 6, very hard. Secondly, the subject was to share $.08 with his partner on two of the trials. Subjects were told to give their partner what he deserved for his work on these trials and to keep the rest. However, for the remaining two trials, money earned by the worker, as decided by the subject, would go to charity, while the remainder would be unused. The confederate was then taken to an adjoining room to work, "away from interruptions," in front of the TV camera while the subject could see and hear him over the TV monitor. Once in the next room, the experimenter again explained the task which the confederate could now hear and see over the monitor, and added that there was a 1-minute time limit and that a clock on the confederate's desk would ring when the time elapsed. The experimenter then left the room, instructing the worker not to begin until she had returned, but she also left the large envelope containing the scoring stencil behind. The experimenter rejoined the subject, answered all remaining questions, and added that while the worker believed that he was working for charity, actually they would both get to keep all money earned on each of the four trials. All subjects then completed four trials. Each trial was begun by the experimenter, who first gave the subject a new rating sheet and eight pennies while informing him either that the worker was working for himself or believed that he was working for charity. The experimenter then rejoined the confederate, told him he was working for charity or for himself, started the clock, and left the room.
The order of trims was randomized over subjects according to a prearranged schedule such that the confederate cheated on one charity and on one self-gain trial, and did not cheat on one charity and one self-gain trial. Cheating occurred midway through a trial when the confederate removed the scoring stencil from its envelope, completed the task, and replaced the stencil before the clock sounded. Following the final trial, subjects were individually questioned about their beliefs about the purpose of the study, who their partner worked for, their attitudes toward their partner, and, finally, whether or not cheating had occurred.
RESULTS Rating and Sharing The rating and sharing dependent measures were each analyzed in separate 2 • 2 analyses of variance with the factors of presence of cheating and intention
Evaluative Decisions Among Delinquents
239
(reward recipient) with both factors within-subjects variables. These analyses yielded parallel results in that each indicated a significant main effect for the cheating factor: F(1, 18) = 16.03, p < .005; F(1, 18) = 12.12,p < .005 for the rating and sharing measures, respectively. In each case, noncheating trials were viewed more positively such that noncheating work performance received higher ratings (means = 4.86 and 3.36 for noncheating and cheating trials, respectively) and were given a larger share of the reward money (means = 4.84 and 3.60 for noncheating and cheating trials, respectively). However, there were only negligible effects associated with the intentionality factor (p > .55) and the cheating • intentionality interactions (p > .33). A second analysis was performed on each of the two dependent measures. These were 2 • 2 analyses of variance, again with the factors of cheating and intention, but in contrast to the previous analyses, these were now completely between-subjects factors utilizing only the scores of each subject's first trial. This was done so that effects of each of the independent variables could be assessed without possible intertrial interactions. These analyses revealed near-significant main effects for the cheating variable: F(1, 15)= 4.10, p < .06;/7(1, 15)= 3.30, p < .09 for the rating and sharing measures, respectively. Again, noncheaters were rated more positively (means = 5.0 and 3.52 for noncheaters and cheaters, respectively) and given a greater share of the reward (means = 5.0 and 3.73 for noncheaters and cheaters, respectively). While these differences are only trends, they do support the previous within-subjects analyses in that significance was reduced since the between-subjects analyses were based on a relatively small number of subjects per cell (between four and six). Effects due to the reward recipient factor and the reward recipient • cheating interaction were again negligible, p > .56 and p > .22, respectively. Postexperimental Questionnaire Analysis of the postexperimental questionnaire indicated that there was little suspicion about the experimental manipulations. When asked about the purpose of the study, all subjects either gave vague descriptions or simply said they did not know. All subjects remembered that their partners believed they had worked both for their own gain and for a charity. Also, only one subject, when asked directly, failed to admit that their partner had cheated. Of the remaining 18 subjects, 15 reported seeing two instances of cheating while 3 subjects reported seeing cheating occur once. In addition, postexperimental interviewing indicated that subjects had accepted the confederate as a fellow detainee housed in the intake unit. The fact that the confederate was a new and unknown person did not arouse suspicion, apparently because these boys were housed in units which were not allowed to mingle with the intake unit. Further, since the majority of boys housed in the intake unit are not transferred to the
240
Savitsky, Muskin, Czyzewski, and Eekert
regular units, but are instead released after several days, it was not unusual to meet previously unknown detainees.
DISCUSSION
The results of this study offered considerable support for previous studies which have found the moral reasoning of delinquents lacking in the awareness of an offender's intentions. That is, subjects in the present study failed to modify their opinions of work trials when the reasons for cheating were either laudable or selfish. Instead, the delinquent boys in the present study only made use of the more obvious and concrete norm regarding cheating behavior. Apparently these boys believed that cheating is bad, regardless of the reasons for this behavior. The present study also served to provide evidence of the generality of previous research which has related moral reasoning with delinquency. That is, Hudgins and Prentice (1973) have noted that the bulk of studies in this area ask subjects to make judgments while they are uninvolved raters responding to hypothetical situations. In contrast, the present study placed subjects into a situation which they apparently believed, judging from their postexperimental questionnaire responses, was actually a bona fide instance of cheating. Further, subjects stood to earn or lose money via their decisions. The present study would therefore seem to reflect more closely on situations in which a delinquent may be an observer of actual behaviors rather than a passive listener to a story. One interesting finding is that delinquents apparently disapprove of cheating. Yet previous studies have shown that delinquents cheat more than normals (Heisler, 1974; Hill, 1934). Several possible explanations may account for this apparent contradiction. First, since normal subjects were not included in the present study, the possibility remains that delinquents may not be as truly negative about cheating as are nondelinquents. A second possibility is, however, that while delinquents are critical of others cheating they may not evaluate their own deceptive behaviors in quite the same way. Perhaps delinquent adolescents fail to give credence to the intentions of other offenders while they remain capable of accepting their own intentions. Further research, in which delinquent subjects evaluate their own deceptive behaviors, would seem necessary to resolve this issue. In summary, evidence from this and other studies suggests that delinquent male adolescents largely ignore the intentions of others. This finding seemingly offers considerable power for explaining the persistence of delinquent behavior among certain children. That is, faced with an aversive situation, a delinquent may evaluate this frustration only in terms of its consequences for him on a superficial level and not with regard to the intentions of the frustrator. A lack of awareness of others' intentions thereby disallows modes of conflict resolution,
Evaluative Decisions Among Delinquents
241
such as rationalization, w h i c h m a y preclude the necessity o f m o r e overt retaliation.
REFERENCES Bandura, A., & McDonald, F. J. Influence of social reinforcements and the behavior of models in shaping children's moral judgments. Journal o f Abnormal Psychology, 1963, 67, 279-281. Cowan, P. A., Langer, J., Heavencick, J., & Nathason, M. Social learning and Piaget's cognitive theory of moral development. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1969, 11, 261-274. Garrett, J., & Libby, W. L. Intention and chance reward allocations in the dyad as determinants of equity. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 28, 21-27. Heisler, G. Ways to deter law violators: Effects of levels of threat and vicarious punishment on cheating. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1974, 42, 577-582. Hill, G. Cheating among delinquent boys. JournalofJuvenile Research, 1934, 18, 169-174. Hudgins, W., & Prentice, N. M. Moral judgments in delinquents and nondelinquent adolescents and their mothers. Journal o f Abnormal Psychology, 1973, 82, 145-152. Kohlberg, L. The development o f modes o f moral thinking and choice in the years 10 to 15. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1958. McCann, D. C., & Prentice, N. M. The facilitating effects of money and moral set on the moral judgment of adolescent delinquents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1973, 82, 81-84. Piaget, J. The moralfudgment o f the child. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1932. Prentice, N. M. The influence of live and symbolic modeling on promoting moral judgments of adolescent juvenile delinquents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1972, 80, 157-161. Savitsky, J. C., & Babl, J. Cheating, intention, and punishment from an equity theory perspective. Journal o f Research in Personality, in press. Turiel, E. An experimental test of the sequentiality of developmental stages in the child's moral judgments. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1966, 3, 611-618.
