Moral Disengagement, Lack of Guilt, and Offending-Related Exhilaration

The results of prior research point to substantial overlap between Sykes and Matza’s theory of neutralization and Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement. These theories appear to describe the same cognitive processes of moral neutralization. As a result, Bandura’s theory has been described by some scholars as redundant with classic neutralization theory. In fact, Bandura’s theory is relatively complex. According to Bandura, moral neutralization facilitates offending not only by reducing anticipatory guilt and shame (the focus of Sykes and Matza) but also by generating additional criminological consequences, such as increasing the perceived rewards of offending (e.g., associating harmful conduct with excitement or exhilaration). In this study, we examine Bandura’s “exhilaration hypothesis” with data from a large survey of justice-system-involved youth. While the observed effects are modest in size, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis and suggest that the varied consequences of moral neutralization warrant further attention from criminologists.