The Implicit Component of Moral Disengagement: Applying the Relational Responding Task to Investigate Its Relationship With Cheating Behavior

This article aims to conceptualize, for the first time, an implicit form of moral disengagement and investigate its role in relation to cheating behavior. In line with the implicit social-cognition models, we argue that the implicit moral disengagement would represent an unintentional, automatic, and less accessible form of the mechanisms bypassing the moral self-regulatory system. We anticipate that in situations implying on-the-spot decisions and where individuals might suffer no consequences for the misconduct, the implicit moral disengagement would predict the actual behavior while the explicit moral disengagement would predict self-reported conduct. The results of three empirical studies provide support for the theorization of an implicit moral disengagement and its assessment through a newly developed implicit measurement procedure using the relational responding task. Results of the structural equation models, including both implicit and explicit moral disengagement, demonstrated that only the implicit one was associated with the actual misconduct.

The stable component of maternal depressive symptoms predicts offspring emotional and behavioral symptoms: a 9-years longitudinal study

Background

Maternal sub-threshold and non-clinical depression and its possible outcomes on offspring internalizing/externalizing symptoms has received growing attention in recent years because of its significant worldwide prevalence.

Methods

Through a Latent State-Trait Analysis approach (LST), this longitudinal study aimed to identify a stable component of non-clinical maternal depression across a temporal interval of 6 years (measured through the Symptom Check-List-90/R) and to determine the effect of this component on children’s emotional and behavioral functioning (measured through the Child Behaviour Check-List) at age 12 years.

Results

LST analysis showed that maternal depressive symptoms tended to remain stable within individuals across 6 years of observation strongly contributing to children’s internalizing/externalizing and dysregulation symptoms.

Conclusions

The current longitudinal analysis of maternal and child data revealed that a stable component of maternal depressive symptoms reliably predicted a wide range of child emotional and behavioral symptoms at 12 years of age.