Resumen de Civic moral disengagement and personality.: A comparison between law and psychology italian students.

Maria Elvira De Caroli, Elisabetta Sagone, Rossella Falanga

• The civic moral disengagement (CMD) is the set of mechanisms that allow subject to self-justification for the realization of socially reprehensible and damaging for the social safety actions (Caprara et al., 2009) and it is divided in: the attribution of blame (AB), moral justification (MJ), euphemistic labelling (EL), diffusion and displacement of responsibility (DIFr-DISr), distortion of consequences (DC), dehumanization of victims (DV), and advantageous comparison (AC). In this investigation we sought to clarify a) the different use of CMD (assessed with the Civic Moral Disengagement) between psychology and law college students; b) the impact of personality factors (measured by the BFQ) on the use of these mechanisms depending on the course of study.

  Statistical analyses showed that boys attending the psychology course used the mechanisms of CMD, and specifically, AB, MG, EL, DISr, DC, and DIFr, more than girls attending the law course; for students of psychology course, the “emotional control” had an impact on MG, the “perseverance” on AB, the “friendliness” influenced DV; for students of law course, “dominance/scrupulousness” had an impact on AB, “openness to culture/perseverance” on DISr, the “dynamism” on DIFr, and the “emotional control” on DV. Future research will investigate the use of the CMD in relation to individual values.