THEOLOGICAL AND PROSECUTORIAL JUDGMENTS AND DEMENTIA

Résumé 0

The objective of the study was to compare the ways in which young people, older people, and older people with dementia cognitively integrated three factors (intention, consequence, and apology) when making prosecutorial judgments (prosecution and revenge) and theological judgments (resentment and reconciliation). The study used an experimental design. The participants were 34 young people (Mage = 22.12, SD = 3.44), 36 older people (Mage = 66.03, SD = 10.21), and 18 older people with dementia (Mage = 75, SD = 10.06). For each moral judgment, the participants were confronted with 12 scenarios built from the combination of the three factors. A set of analyses of variance (ANOVAs) with repeated measures were performed on data. Whatever the judgment, older people with dementia differed from young people and older people with regard to the number of factors considered. Young and older participants used the three information cues (intent, consequence, and apologies) for the four judgment tasks (prosecution, revenge, reconciliation, and resentment) while older people with dementia gave greater weight to intention. In contrast to young and older people, older people with dementia processed prosecutorial judgments and theological judgments in the same manner. The cognitive impairment does not allow older people with dementia to differentiate moral judgments into two categories. Dementia has a negative influence on process of information integration in moral judgment. This may be useful for clinical practice – caregivers.