Moral self-assessment after committing a crime: A study on men and women in prison with a control group

Moral self-assessment is vital to one's identity, but how does it change after committing immoral behavior like crime? We compared a sample of N = 382 men and women in prison sentenced for violent and non-violent crimes with a matched control group ( N = 382). We measured their self-importance of moral identity, moral self-concept, and moral self-image. We found prisoners had lower moral self-concept and internalization but higher symbolization and moral self-image than non-prisoners. However, all the effects were small. Moreover, violent prisoners had slightly higher internalization than non-violent prisoners, but they did not differ in other moral self-assessments. Women in prison scored higher in moral self-concept and internalization than men in prison, while men in prison scored higher in symbolization than women in prison. We found no sex differences in moral self-image. In sum, committing a crime slightly impacts one's moral self-perception, and we need more studies to understand the mechanisms behind it.