Travaglino Giovanni A, Marini Maddalena
Department of Law and Criminology, School of Law and Social Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, TW20 0EX, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Viale Ellittico, 31, 81100, Caserta, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jun 6;15(1):19866. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-03984-8.
Criminal groups, such as Italian criminal organizations, exert governance over communities. According to Intra-Cultural Appropriation Theory (ICAT), these groups can gain a degree of legitimacy by strategically appropriating masculinity values. Specifically, by portraying themselves as embodying masculinity, criminal organizations are evaluated more positively by individuals who endorse masculine honor ideologies. An untested assumption of this process is that individuals ascribe masculine qualities to criminal groups. In two studies (N = 310), we employed the Single Category Implicit Association Test to investigate whether individuals implicitly associated the categories of 'male' (Study 1) and 'masculinity' (Study 2) with criminal organizations as opposed to the state. Additionally, in Study 2, we tested whether this implicit association moderated the relationship between individuals' endorsement of masculine honor ideology and their attitudes toward criminal organizations. The findings supported the hypothesis that individuals implicitly attributed masculinity-related concepts to criminal organizations. Study 2 further showed that the positive link between endorsement of masculine honor ideology and legitimizing attitudes towards criminal organizations was stronger when individuals also held a stronger implicit association between masculinity and criminal organizations.
犯罪集团，如意大利犯罪组织，对社区实施治理。根据文化内挪用理论（ICAT），这些集团可以通过策略性地挪用男性气质价值观来获得一定程度的合法性。具体而言，通过将自己描绘成体现男性气质的形象，犯罪组织会得到认同男性荣誉意识形态的个体更积极的评价。这一过程中一个未经检验的假设是，个体将男性特质赋予犯罪集团。在两项研究（N = 310）中，我们采用单类别内隐联想测验来调查个体是否会将“男性”（研究1）和“男性气质”（研究2）类别与犯罪组织而非国家进行内隐联想。此外，在研究2中，我们测试了这种内隐联想是否调节了个体对男性荣誉意识形态的认同与其对犯罪组织态度之间的关系。研究结果支持了个体将与男性气质相关的概念内隐地归因于犯罪组织这一假设。研究2进一步表明，当个体在男性气质与犯罪组织之间也存在更强的内隐联想时，对男性荣誉意识形态的认同与对犯罪组织的合法化态度之间的正向联系更强。
