Peer Bullies and Victims' Perceptions of Moral Transgression versus Morally-Aimed Dishonesty

Previous studies suggest that people judge moral violation (interpersonal injustice of unprovoked harm) to be more serious, wrong, and punishable than acts of dishonesty and lying, thus classifying morality as a super-ordinate principle to acts of honesty. The present study examined whether or not the observed pattern of subordination of honesty to the moral principle of interpersonal harm would remain the same or change among aggressive (peer bullies), passive (bully victims) youths and those who are neither bullies nor bully victims. Two questionnaires were administered to examine the reasoning of 166 adolescents (9th to 12th grades), with self-identified experiences of having been peer bullies, bully victims, or neither bullies or victims, about moral transgressions (MT, involving gratuitous and deliberate harm to others) and morally-aimed dishonesty (MAD, involving lying or breaking promises to prevent unprovoked harm to others). Adolescents altogether viewed moral transgressions (MT), in comparison to morally-aimed transgressions (MAD), as less right and less subject to personal autonomy. Regression analysis, however, revealed that bullies more positively endorsed MT as a right act and judged MT acts to be subject to greater personal discretion of the protagonist. By contrast, victims more positively endorsed MAD as a right act, but victims' judgments of MAD being subject to the protagonist's personal discretion were nonsignificant. The results imply that the bullies minimize the inherent consequential harm in the straightforward moral transgressions and overextend protagonists' discretion in the transgressions. Victims, on the other hand, minimize protagonists' personal realm of legitimate autonomy utilized in judging multi-faceted moral dilemma.