Exploring the relationship between morality and offending through the use of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire

Thompson, R, Newton, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2491-8401 and Reeves, C, 2021. Exploring the relationship between morality and offending through the use of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. Crime Prevention and Community Safety. ISSN 1460-3780

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Abstract

This study applies the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) to examine the relationship between morality and self-reported offending, captured using a questionnaire (N= 184). One hundred and forty-one respondents (77%) reported previously committing an offence. Identified measures of morality revealed no statistically significant differences between self-reported offenders and non-offenders, challenging commonly held presumptions that offending is associated with lower levels of morality. Moreover, this pattern was consistent across a range of offence types and offence severities. Using the MFQ, morality was broken down by individual MFQ foundations (sub-domains). A consistent although non-significant pattern emerged: scores for the in-group/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity foundations were lower than the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations for all respondents. This highlights the importance of future research into morality and offending moving beyond the use of single metric measures of morality, and deconstructing this further into sub-domain measures, such as those offered by the MFQ.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Crime Prevention and Community Safety
Creators:	Thompson, R., Newton, A. and Reeves, C.
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan (part of Springer Nature)
Date:	13 September 2021
ISSN:	1460-3780
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1057/s41300-021-00126-w DOI 1442539 Other
Rights:	This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41300-021-00126-w
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Lee Houghton
Date Added:	03 Jun 2021 12:25
Last Modified:	18 Mar 2026 16:05
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/42968

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