Punishment Judgments Research Articles

Moral character and competence judgments of sexual harassers and fraudsters in academic and business contexts.

Fraud and sexual harassment have been haunting academia for years. While the scientific community proposed strategies to overcome misconduct in research, the problem of sexual harassment seems unresolved. One reason for this might be a difference between men and women in the perception of the moral character and competence of sexual harassers. Across four studies (N = 3776), in the UK and the US, men judged the sexual harasser as less immoral than women (Studies 1, 2, and 3a), even though sexual harassment was considered more harmful than fraud (Study 2). Consequently, men demanded less punishment for sexual harassers than women (Studies 1 and 2). This gender difference was not explained by moral rationalization (Study 3a). Further, a sexual harasser was judged as more competent than a fraudster but in an academic, not business, context (Studies 1 and 2). This effect was driven by the moral decoupling process, which participants used to separate competence judgments from moral judgments (Study 3b). Overall, these results suggest that in the academic context, gender interests most likely shape moral and punishment judgments towards sexual harassers, while the decoupling process allows both genders to perceive them as competent and immoral at the same time.

Euphemism as a powerful framing device that influences moral judgments and punitive responses after wrongdoing.

Euphemism-that is, softening words or phrases substituted for more direct language-has become pervasive in our everyday personal and professional lives. Leveraging theory and research on construal and framing effects, we conceptualize euphemism as a linguistic framing device that influences how observers construe situations and the people, groups, objects, and events within them. We then experimentally investigate the effects of euphemism as a linguistic framing device on third-party judgments about moral transgressions (i.e., bribery, fraud). Across studies (total N = 3,081) we find consistent evidence that employing euphemistic labels (relative to their noneuphemistic analogs) reduces the perceived severity of moral transgressions and, as a result, also reduces third-party motivations to punish transgressors. Overt experimental manipulations to reconstrue euphemistic labels into their noneuphemistic forms reduced, but did not entirely eliminate, the effects on moral severity and punishment judgments. Participants did not sufficiently adjust their judgments. These findings underscore the power of simple linguistic manipulations in influencing public opinion, and they have important implications for the possibility of creating a more just and fair society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

모의 배심원의 성별, 피해자의 저항 여부와 지적장애 유무가 성폭력 처벌 판단에 미치는 영향

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of mock juror's gender, the resistance and intellectual disability of victim on punishment judgments in a sexual assault case, this study is designed with between subjects 2(resistance: do vs do not) X 2(intellectual disability: present vs absent). Participants, aged 20 to 59 eligible for jury duty nationwide, were presented with manipulated trial scenarios and narratives regarding the resistance and intellectual disability of victim. Subsequently, they were asked to provide judgments on guilty/not guilty, probability of guilt, sentencing, as well as to provide Korean Hostile Sexism ratings. Although there was no interaction effect between the victim resistance and intellectual disability of victim on the probability of guilt and sentencing, the probability of guilt was higher when resistance was present and when there was an intellectual disability. Additionally, sentencing was higher when there was an intellectual disability. The study findings indicated that female were more likely than male to render guilty verdicts. Further analysis revealed a sequential mediating effect between gender and sentencing judgments, mediated by hostile sexism ratings and judgment of consent to sexual intercourse. In other words, men had a higher level of hostile sexism ratings than women, and the higher hostile sexism ratings, the higher the degree of sexual consent. The higher the degree of sexual consent, the lower the punitive judgment.

Political orientation and moral judgment of sexual misconduct

In a series of studies in the U.S. (total N participants = 4,828) using both news articles (Studies 1-2) and constructed scenarios (Studies 3-4), we investigated how judgments of responsibility, blame, causal contribution, and punishment for alleged perpetrators and victims of sexual misconduct are influenced by (1) the political orientation of media outlets, (2) participants’ political orientation, and (3) the alleged perpetrators’ political orientation. Results indicated that participants’ political orientation, and the interaction between participants’ and alleged perpetrators’ political orientation, predicted moral judgments. Conservative participants were generally more likely inculpate and punish alleged victims in all four studies. Both conservative and liberal participants judged politically-aligned alleged perpetrators more leniently than politically-opposed alleged perpetrators. This political ingroup effect was ubiquitous across all tests of the dependent measures for conservative participants; whereas it was muted and unreliable for liberal participants. The findings collectively demonstrate that moral judgments about sexual misconduct are politicized at multiple psychological levels, and in ways that asymmetrically affect victims.

Punishment as a scarce resource: a potential policy intervention for managing incarceration rates.

Scholars have proposed that incarceration rates might be reduced by a requirement that judges justify incarceration decisions with respect to their operational costs (e.g., prison capacity). In an Internet-based vignette experiment (N = 214), we tested this prediction by examining whether criminal punishment judgments (prison vs. probation) among university undergraduates would be influenced by a prompt to provide a justification for one's judgment, and by a brief message describing prison capacity costs. We found that (1) the justification prompt alone was sufficient to reduce incarceration rates, (2) the prison capacity message also independently reduced incarceration rates, and (3) incarceration rates were most strongly reduced (by about 25%) when decision makers were asked to justify their sentences with respect to the expected capacity costs. These effects survived a test of robustness and occurred regardless of whether participants reported that prison costs should influence judgments of incarceration. At the individual crime level, the least serious crimes were most amenable to reconsideration for probation. These findings are important for policymakers attempting to manage high incarceration rates.

Moral luck and the roles of outcome and negligence in moral judgments

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influences of outcome and negligence on moral judgments of accidental actions, and hence their roles in the explanation of moral luck. In Experiment 1 (N = 300), two previous studies were replicated in which an agent armed with either a bat or a gun (to manipulate negligence) unintentionally killed a suspected intruder who turned out, luckily, to be a burglar, or unluckily, a family friend (to manipulate outcome). In response to an online questionnaire, participants made moral judgments of punishment, blame and wrongness and rated the agent's negligence and intentionality. The effects of both outcome (victim) and negligence (weapon type) IVs were slight, whereas perceived negligence had a substantial impact on all three judgments. In Experiment 2 (N = 241) the potential influence of both outcome and negligence was raised by increasing the contrasts between conditions: the agent was armed or unarmed, and the suspected intruder was harmed or unharmed. Perceived negligence again had a substantial impact on all three judgments, but now outcome, too, had a strong and direct effect on punishment judgments. These findings indicate that outcome effects on blame and wrongness judgments of accidental agents result primarily from the differential attribution of negligence: agents are considered more negligent – and hence more culpable – when outcomes are worse. In contrast, high levels of punishment are usually assigned when, and only when, the accidental agent is considered negligent and the outcome is negative. We discuss the implications for the interpretation of previous findings of strong outcome effects, and whether these effects, and therefore moral luck, are best explained by hindsight bias or by more rational updating of moral judgments.

The Effects of Intent, Outcome, and Causality on Moral Judgments and Decision Processes.

Over the past decade, moral judgments and their underlying decision processes have more frequently been considered from a dynamic and multi-factorial perspective rather than a binary approach (e.g., dual-system processes). The agent’s intent and his or her causal role in the outcome–as well as the outcome importance–are key psychological factors that influence moral decisions, especially judgments of punishment. The current research aimed to study the influence of intent, outcome, and causality variations on moral decisions, and to identify their interaction during the decision process by embedding the moral scenarios within an adapted mouse-tracking paradigm. Findings of the preregistered study (final n = 80) revealed main effects for intent, outcome, and causality on judgments of punishment, and an interaction between the effects of intent and causality. We furthermore explored the dynamics of these effects during the decision process via the analysis of mouse trajectories in the course of time. It allowed detecting when these factors intervened during the trial time course. The present findings thus both replicate and extend previous research on moral judgment, and evidence that, despite some ongoing challenges, mouse-tracking represents a promising tool to investigate moral decision-making.

Normative views and resource distribution behavior in childhood: Dissociated at the group level, but associated at the individual level

Previous research debated whether and to which extent normative views and own resource distribution behavior in childhood are dissociated or aligned. The present study aims to advance this debate by examining the relation from two different methodological viewpoints within the same study. Here, 4–6-year-old children’s (N = 91) normative views and distribution behavior when confronted with a rich friend and a poor non-friend were assessed. Children’s spontaneous protest and affirmation toward distributors, evaluations, and punishment judgments served as normative indicators. Looking at average normative views and behavior, preschoolers held a normative view toward rectifying inequalities while favoring the rich friend themselves. Looking at the consistency of interindividual differences, preschooler’s normative view correlated with behavior. The study highlights that the relation between normative views and behavior is characterized by both dissociation and coherence.

Distinctions between moral and conventional judgments from early to middle childhood: A meta-analysis of social domain theory research.

Understanding distinctions between morality and conventions is an important milestone in children's moral development. The current meta-analysis integrated decades of social domain theory research (Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 1983) on moral and conventional judgments from early to middle childhood. We examined 95 effect sizes from 18 studies (2,707 children; Mage = 7.30 years; 51% females; 42% Whites). Along with these, effects from additional 28 studies were estimated with imputed correlations in a secondary analysis of 248 effect sizes from 46 studies (4,469 children; Mage = 7.34 years; 46% females; 32% Whites). Across all judgments, moral/conventional distinction effects were significant, positive, and moderate. Consistent with social domain theory definitions of morality, children evaluated moral transgressions as more wrong independent of authorities' commands or rules than conventional transgressions and moral rules as more generalizable and inalterable than conventional rules. Moral transgressions also were seen as more unacceptable and more deserving of punishment than conventional transgressions. The aggregated effects were also significant for each type of judgment. However, effects were stronger for criteria considered definitional of the domains than for acceptability or punishment judgments, which are not considered criteria. Moreover, children made greater domain distinctions with age across all types of judgments. When examined separately, age moderated effects only for criterion judgments, not for acceptability or punishment judgments. Effects for distinctions also were moderated by the types of moral and conventional rules assessed. Thus, moral/conventional distinctions were found across early and middle childhood, but there was variability in children's developing understanding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

An earlier role for intent in children's partner choice versus punishment.

Among the many factors that influence our moral judgments, two are especially important: whether the person caused a bad outcome and whether they intended for it to happen. Notably, the weight accorded to these factors in adulthood varies by the type of judgment being made. For punishment decisions, intentions and outcomes carry relatively equal weight; for partner choice decisions (i.e., deciding whether or not to interact with someone again), intentions are weighted much more heavily. These behavioral differences in punishment and partner choice judgments may also reflect more fundamental differences in the cognitive processes supporting these decisions. Exploring how punishment and partner choice emerge in development provides important and unique insight into these processes as they emerge and mature. Here, we explore the developmental emergence of punishment and partner choice decisions in 4- to 9-year-old children. Given the importance of intentions for partner choice decisions-from both theoretical and empirical perspectives-we targeted the sensitivity of these two responses to others' intentions as well as outcomes caused. Our punishment results replicate past work: Young children are more focused on outcomes caused and become increasingly sensitive to intentions with age. In contrast, partner choice judgments exhibit sensitivity to intentions at an earlier age than punishment judgments, manifesting as earlier partner choice in cases of attempted violations. These results reveal distinct developmental trajectories for punishment and partner choice judgments, with implications for our understanding of the processes underlying these two responses as well as the development of moral judgment more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A Painful Message

Abstract. This preregistered experiment examined two proximate drivers of retributive punishment attitudes: the motivation to make the perpetrator suffer, and understand the wrongfulness of his offense. In a sample of 514 US adults, we presented criminal case summaries that varied the level of suffering (absent vs. present) and understanding (absent vs. present) experienced by the perpetrator and measured punishment judgments and attitudes. Our results demonstrate, as predicted, that participants were more satisfied by the sentence and less punitive when they believed that the perpetrator had suffered from the punishment or that he understood the wrongfulness of his actions. This pattern held across crimes of varying seriousness (theft vs. aggravated robbery) and across two narrative perspectives (participant as victim vs. participant as third party). However, joint evidence of suffering and understanding did not strengthen this effect, contrary to predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for leading philosophical theories of punishment.

Losing the lottery of life: Examining intuitions of desert toward the socially and genetically "unlucky" in criminal punishment contexts.

This research presents three experiments that examine how natural "luck" (social and genetic luck) may affect lay intuitions toward desert-based criminal punishment. Study 1 examined if intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards in relation to good qualities/advantages ascribed to natural luck would extend to desert-based punishments in relation to bad qualities/disadvantages ascribed to natural luck. Study 2 examined how both social and genetic luck affect support for desert-based punishment across different criminal offenses and tests the relevance of immanent justice reasoning to such support. Study 3 examined whether findings in the prior studies are specific to desert-based punishment and immanent justice reasoning, or if natural luck elicits broader punishment judgments and types of justice reasoning. Results showed that known intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards do extend to desert-based punishments in instances of natural luck. Immanent justice reasoning was strongly associated with support for desert-based punishment in instances of both social and genetic luck. However, genetic luck, as compared to social luck, significantly increased support for desert-based punishment, with imminent justice reasoning mediating this increased support. Implications are discussed in relation to capital sentencing and better understanding lay intuitions toward the punishment of criminal offenders who may have qualities ascribed to the "natural lottery."

Essentialist thinking predicts culpability and punishment judgments

ABSTRACT People often perceive social groups (e.g. ethnic groups, occupations, gender groups) as having fixed membership and discrete boundaries. This paper proposes that essentialist beliefs about abstract crime concepts, as naturally defined and universally coherent, play a role in culpability and sentencing judgments. In three studies, a general sample of college students (Study 1, n = 52), a lay public sample recruited from MTurk (Study 2, n = 102), and a sample of college students recruited from criminal justice classrooms (Study 3, n = 62) read crime vignettes and made culpability and sentencing decisions. We measured essentialist beliefs about crime categories by using an adapted essentialism scale for crimes, hypothesizing that essentialist tendencies would predict higher culpability ratings and harsher punishments. Results showed that lay participants had an overall tendency to endorse essentialist statements, and their essentialist ratings significantly predicted culpability and sentencing judgments with regards to the corresponding crimes. In contrast, students with formal education in criminal justice showed significantly weaker essentialist thinking about crime concepts, and their essentialist ratings did not predict culpability and sentencing outcomes. The current findings provide new evidence regarding how essentialist thinking and subject matter knowledge frames lay understandings about crime concepts, and how such intuitive beliefs may systematically influence legal judgments.

Who Is to Blame? Children's and Adults' Moral Judgments Regarding Victim and Transgressor Negligence.

Research has documented that individuals consider outcomes, intentions, and transgressor negligence when making morally relevant judgments (Nobes, Panagiotaki, & Engelhardt, 2017). However, less is known about whether individuals attend to both victim and transgressor negligence in their evaluations. The current study measured 3- to 6-year-olds (N=70), 7- to 12-year-olds (N=54), and adults' (N=97, ages 18-25years) moral judgments about scenarios in which an accidental transgression occurred involving property damage or physical harm. Participants were either assigned to conditions where the victim or the transgressor was negligent. Results revealed attention to negligence among all participants across a range of different moral judgment measures (including acceptability judgments, punishment judgments, and attributions of blame), with age-related increases in attention to negligence evident. Results provide novel evidence that children and adults consider not just outcomes and intentions, but also the role of negligence in both victims and transgressors, when making social decisions.

Behavioral explanations reduce retributive punishment but not reward: The mediating role of conscious will.

Conceptions of responsibility are associated with the degree to which people ascribe conscious will to others. However, it is not known how the biological and environmental circumstances of moral actors independently impact attributions of conscious will. Although reductions in conscious will are associated with diminished punishment of criminals, does a reduced sense of conscious will of a hero affect support for reward? In two pre-registered studies (total N = 2668), we investigated the effects of biological or environmental histories on judgements of punishment and reward. Biological and environmental circumstances (especially biological) reduced perceptions of conscious will, which in turn reduced conviction judgements and punishment severity (Studies 1-2). In the context of a moderated mediation, we found that reductions in perceptions of conscious will were unrelated for a desire to reward a hero (Study 2). Findings are discussed in the context of a model of judgement, conscious will, and responsibility.

When morality opposes the law: An fMRI investigation into punishment judgments for crimes with good intentions

In judicial practice, morally right but legally wrong instances usually pose significant challenges for legal decision makers. To examine the cognitive and neural foundations of legal judgments in criminal cases involving apparent moral conflicts, we scanned 30 female participants during punishment judgments for crimes committed with good intentions. The behavioral results confirmed that moral acceptability was significantly correlated with the punishment ratings only in the good-intentioned crimes. The fMRI data mainly revealed that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) plays special roles in processing criminal offenders’ state of mind and that the right dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) plays roles in resolving moral conflicts involved in legal judgments. Specifically, we found that compared to the bad-intentioned scenarios, the good-intentioned scenarios evoked greater activities during the postreading stage in the brain area of the rTPJ and that a signal increase in the rTPJ was associated with more lenient penalty judgments in the good-intentioned scenarios. Furthermore, reading crime scenarios with good intentions elicited stronger activation in the rdlPFC, which showed enhanced functional connectivity with the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Overall, our study sheds some light on the neurocognitive underpinnings of legal judgments in special criminal cases and enhances our understanding of the relationship between legal and moral judgments.

Justice at any cost? The impact of cost-benefit salience on criminal punishment judgments.

This study investigated the effect of cost-benefit salience on simulated criminal punishment judgments. In two vignette-based survey experiments, we sought to identify how the salience of decision costs influences laypeople's punishment judgments. In both experiments (N1 =109; N2 =398), undergraduate participants made sentencing judgments with and without explicit information about the direct, material costs of incarceration. Using a within-subjects design, Experiment 1 revealed that increasing the salience of incarceration costs mitigated punishments. However, when costs were not made salient, punishments were no lower than those made when the costs were externalized (i.e., paid by a third party). Experiment 2 showed the same pattern using a between-subjects design. We conclude that, when laypeople formulate sentencing attitudes without exposure to the costs of the punishment, they are prone to discount those costs, behaving as if punishment is societally cost-free. However, when cost information is salient, they utilize it, suggesting the operation of a genuine, albeit labile, punishment preference. We discuss the implications of these findings for psychological theories of decision making and for sentencing policy, including the degree of transparency about the relevant costs of incarceration during the decision process.

No luck for moral luck

Moral philosophers and psychologists often assume that people judge morally lucky and morally unlucky agents differently, an assumption that stands at the heart of the Puzzle of Moral Luck. We examine whether the asymmetry is found for reflective intuitions regarding wrongness, blame, permissibility, and punishment judgments, whether people’s concrete, case-based judgments align with their explicit, abstract principles regarding moral luck, and what psychological mechanisms might drive the effect. Our experiments produce three findings: First, in within-subjects experiments favorable to reflective deliberation, the vast majority of people judge a lucky and an unlucky agent as equally blameworthy, and their actions as equally wrong and permissible. The philosophical Puzzle of Moral Luck, and the challenge to the very possibility of systematic ethics it is frequently taken to engender, thus simply do not arise. Second, punishment judgments are significantly more outcome-dependent than wrongness, blame, and permissibility judgments. While this constitutes evidence in favor of current Dual Process Theories of moral judgment, the latter need to be qualified: punishment and blame judgments do not seem to be driven by the same process, as is commonly argued in the literature. Third, in between-subjects experiments, outcome has an effect on all four types of moral judgments. This effect is mediated by negligence ascriptions and can ultimately be explained as due to differing probability ascriptions across cases.

Alternatives to prison for drug offenders in Belgium during the past decade

ObjectiveImprisonment has a more pronounced criminogenic effect on drug offenders than on other types of offenders. Additionally, little research has been conducted on the practical application of drug-related alternatives to prison. Therefore, this study describes drug-related alternatives to prison in Belgium over a ten years' period since 2005. MethodsThe applied drug-related alternatives to prison (‘probation’, ‘conditional release’, ‘mediation in criminal cases’, ‘community service’ and ‘electronic monitoring’) were subject to a secondary data analysis of the database of the Houses of Justice. ResultsMen, the age group of 16–24 years old and Belgians are most sentenced to alternatives to prison. Nevertheless, 38% of women are guided towards ‘probation’ while 8% is ‘mediated in criminal cases’ compared to 30% and 5% of males respectively (p < .001). 26% of non-Belgians are involved in ‘conditional release’ and ‘electronic monitoring’ compared to 22% and 16% among Belgians (p < .001) respectively. With regards to age, 21% of the offenders older than 24 years are involved in ‘electronic monitoring’ compared to 6% among the offenders younger than 25 years (p < .001). ConclusionsThe results highlight differences in punishment judgments by age, gender and nationality that continues to be indicative for perceived threat, danger and culpability of the offenders.

A World of Blame to Go Around: Cross-Cultural Determinants of Responsibility and Punishment Judgments.

Research finds collectivists make external attributions for others' behavior, whereas individualists make internal attributions. By focusing on external causes, collectivists should be less punitive toward those who harm others. Yet, many collectivistic cultures are known for strict retributive justice systems. How can collectivists simultaneously make external attributions and punish so harshly? We hypothesized that unlike individualists whose analytic tendencies engender a focus on mental states where judgments of accountability stem from perceptions of a harm-doer's agency, collectivists' holistic cognitive tendencies engender a focus on social harmony where judgments of accountability stem from perceived social consequences of the harmful act. Thus, what leads collectivists to make external attributions for behavior also leads to harsh punishment of those harming the collective welfare. Four cross-cultural studies found evidence that perceptions of a target's agency more strongly predicted responsibility and punishment judgments for individualists, whereas perceived severity of the harm was stronger for collectivists.