The study of moral disengagement offers the potential for understanding the intrapsychic mechanisms that are the basis for the development of antisocial and criminal behavior. Exploring the model of moral disengagement could increase our understanding of cognitive mechanisms, which explain why people are distant and indifferent to social and moral values.
Criminology has a long history of studying moral disengagement in connection with aggressive and antisocial behavior not only in adulthood, but also in childhood and adolescence.