The Association Between Child Maltreatment and Moral Disengagement: A Three-Level Meta-Analytic Review

Moral disengagement is a psychological process that enables individuals to distance themselves from their moral standards and justify unethical behavior. A growing body of empirical evidence has documented associations between child maltreatment and elevated levels of moral disengagement. However, a substantial degree of inconsistency has been identified within the extant empirical literature regarding the magnitude of this relationship. This meta-analytic study systematically examines the strength of the association between child maltreatment and moral disengagement across heterogeneous populations, and potential moderating effects of this association. A comprehensive systematic review was conducted in four databases (Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and CNKI). The present study implemented three-level modeling in R to quantitatively analyze the association between child maltreatment and moral disengagement. Furthermore, moderator analyses were conducted. The final analytic sample comprised 27 primary studies (k = 27; total N = 24,611). The meta-analytic synthesis revealed a significant positive association between child maltreatment and moral disengagement (r = 0.262, 95% CI [0.229, 0.307], p < .001). The magnitude of the association between child maltreatment and moral disengagement is stronger for males than for females. The strength of the association between child maltreatment and moral disengagement differs by measurement of moral disengagement and category of moral disengagement. The findings of the present study carry significant implications for the development of intervention programs, emphasizing the necessity of integrating trauma-informed frameworks into moral (re)engagement programs to address the moral consequences of childhood adversity.