RT Article
T1 Moral Salience, Situational Moral Evaluations, and Criminal Choice
JF Crime & delinquency
VO 71
IS 9
SP 3157
OP 3191
A1 Herman, Shaina
A1 Pogarsky, Greg
A2 Pogarsky, Greg
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1932043047
AB Research increasingly aims to better understand criminal behavior in context. Invariably, this entails integrating sociological (and other) perspectives on structure and environment, with psychological and economic notions of individual decision processes. Unique among environmental influences on crime is the immediate context surrounding an offending opportunity. Here we focus on moral context. Perceived choice is often constrained by structural factors, such as concentrated disadvantage and social inequalities, which restrict prosocial opportunities and encourage offending. System 1 heuristic processes that involve moral salience can affect perceived choice sets as well. Such processes narrow choices by directing attention to one or a subset of behavioral options and away from others. They can also expand choices by counteracting the attention narrowing, criminogenic influences of competing heuristics such as temporally present orientation. Below we examine whether contextual circumstances can amplify the internal prominence of one’s moral self-conception, thus influencing moral judgements and related action. Using randomized experiments embedded in two online surveys, we assess the role of morally laden situational cues in choice processes.
K1 situational moral evaluations
K1 Salience
K1 Decision-making
K1 Crime
K1 Morality
DO 10.1177/00111287241259474