Punishment Judgments Research Articles

Offenders and Victims of Attacks: The Impact of Violence and Professional Context on Judgements of Punishment

Cet article vise à mettre en évidence l’influence du vécu de la violence en tant qu’auteur d’infraction ou en tant que victime sur l’appréciation de situations d’agressions. Les deux expériences présentées ici comparent le jugement moral de personnes incarcérées à celui de personnes victimes d’agressions verbales et/ou physiques. Les résultats de notre première expérience nous permettent de confirmer l’indulgence des détenus et la sévérité des victimes. La deuxième recherche montre l’impact du contexte professionnel sur l’évaluation de la punition accordée à un agresseur. Ainsi, les agents de la SNCF se montrent très sévères dans leurs jugements alors que le personnel soignant d’un hôpital psychiatrique est quant à lui très indulgent. Cette différence entre ces deux types de salariés provient probablement de la qualification des situations d’agressions et du sens attribué à la victimation.

Victim Impact Testimony and the Psychology of Punishment

A growing body of empirical evidence from psychology, sociology, law, and criminal justice has demonstrated that lay intuitions about punishment are strongly rooted in retributivism: i.e., the idea that punishment should be distributed in proportion to moral desert. Level of harm is often thought to be indicative of desert, but harm described by victims (or survivors) in the context of victim impact evidence is subjective and often unforeseeable insofar as it is attributable to chance factors. How do observers (such as jurors or judges) use information about consequences determined by chance factors when they judge punishment? The emotional and cognitive processes involved in jurors' use of victim impact evidence potentially reveals key insights about the psychological mechanisms underlying laypersons' punishment judgments generally. This paper explores empirical evidence for the notion that the subjective harm experienced by the victim of an offense serves as proxy for the level of defendant's effort and culpability, and by implication, the perceived seriousness of the crime.

Children's judgements of psychological harm in normal and noncanonical situations.

This study investigated children's (3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds) and adults' (total N = 92) integration of information about intentions, acts, and outcomes in moral judgments of psychological harm. Behavioral and emotional predictions and judgments of act acceptability and punishment were made under normal and noncanonical causal conditions. Participants at all ages judged it wrong to inflict negative psychological reactions of fear or embarrassment on unwilling participants, even when these reactions were idiosyncratic or noncanonical. When assigning punishment, younger children tended to use an outcome rule, whereas older participants were more likely to use an intention rule or a conjunction rule (if outcome is negative and intention is negative, then punish). The results show that children as young as 3 years are able to take into account other people's idiosyncratic perspectives when making moral judgments of psychological harm.

Public Perceptions of Race and Crime: The Role of Racial Stereotypes

Theory: Social psychological theories of social stereotyping are used to generate a series of predictions about the conditions under which whites' stereotypes of African-Americans are likely to bias their evaluations of blacks in the context of crime. Hypotheses: Stereotypes of African-Americans should influence attitudes on crime policy primarily when criminals are black, crimes are violent, policies are punitive, and no individuating information seriously undercuts the stereotype. Methods: Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) procedures are used to administer a series of survey experiments where the race and other characteristics of the target (e.g., criminal suspects, furlough programs, etc.) are manipulated in interviews with Lexington, Kentucky residents in a 1994 probability survey. Results: Consistent with our expectations, we find a strong relationship between whites' images of African-Americans and judgments of crime and punishment, but only for black criminals who commit violent crimes, and only for punitive (vs. preventive) policies. Because these are the circumstances which typically surround the crime issue, we conclude that much of public opinion in this domain is influenced by racial concerns.

Indian Merchant Navy Officers' Judgements of Causality, Blameworthiness, and Punishment for a Shipping Accident

Applied PsychologyVolume 43, Issue 1 p. 75-87 Indian Merchant Navy Officers' Judgements of Causality, Blameworthiness, and Punishment for a Shipping Accident Vidyut Lata Dhir, Vidyut Lata Dhir University of Bombay, IndiaSearch for more papers by this authorSuresh Kanekar, Corresponding Author Suresh Kanekar University of Bombay, IndiaSuresh Kanekar, Department of Applied Psychology, University of Bombay, Vidyanagari, Bombay 400 098, IndiaSearch for more papers by this author Vidyut Lata Dhir, Vidyut Lata Dhir University of Bombay, IndiaSearch for more papers by this authorSuresh Kanekar, Corresponding Author Suresh Kanekar University of Bombay, IndiaSuresh Kanekar, Department of Applied Psychology, University of Bombay, Vidyanagari, Bombay 400 098, IndiaSearch for more papers by this author First published: January 1994 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1994.tb00810.xCitations: 3AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume43, Issue1January 1994Pages 75-87 RelatedInformation

Public opinion regarding sentences for crime: Does it exist?

Efforts to identify public attitudes toward various crime and justice-related issues have become increasingly frequent as the technology and methodology to support such initiatives have become more sophisticated. In addition, both the public opinion polling and social scientific communities have become more energetic in arguing that the results of such efforts ought to have some bearing on the development of public policy. Moreover, social analysts have become interested in a number of theoretical relationships between citizen sentiment and public policy. Underlying the research on public sentiment is the assumption that the public is in possession of a discrete and discernible body of sentiment that can be accessed through the survey techniques currently available. This article calls this assumption into question. Through an examination of the survey methodology used to identify public sentiment regarding judgements of punishment for crime it is argued that faith in the existence of public opinion regarding policy-related issues in crime and justice may be premature.

Capacity Responsibility in Social Evaluation

Negative social evaluations for undesirable behavior are usually forestalled if behavior was constrained by personal limitations and incapacities or external coercive pressures. A study was designed to demonstrate that social evaluations are based not only on the degree of constraint that exists in the immediate situation but also on responsibility for the process by which control was inhibited Capacity-development responsibility refers to responsibility for the development of an incapacitating characteristic such as depression, alcoholism, or neurosis, whereas capacity-activation responsibility refers to responsibility for the activation of an incapacity in situations where the incapacity may produce negative outcomes. Subjects were presented with a series of vignettes that varied capacity-development and capacity-activation responsibility, as well as the severity of the outcome that occurred. Each of these factors significantly influenced judgments of blame and punishment. The implications of capacity-development and capacity-activation responsibility for social judgment are discussed, as well as avenues for further research.

Judgements of appropriate punishment: The effects of question type

The emergence of the justice model as a basis for sentencing policy has raised a number of important issues. For instance, although the model generally posits that the severityof sentences ought to be proportional to the seriousness of offenses, a legitimate metric for the establishment of such a sentencing scheme has yet to be developed. The use of public attitudes toward both crime seriousness and appropriate punishment may provide the basis for such a system. Given the potential impact of such attitudes on the lives of convicted offenders, it is critical that care be exercised in the measurement of public sentiments. This article describes the results of an effort to assess the effects of open-ended versus closed-ended question formats on judgments of the kind and amount of punishment appropriate for various kinds of offenses. The results suggest that question type may indeed have an effect on the character of the punishment identified as appropriate by respondents.

Limited mental capacities and perceived control in attribution of responsibility.

Two studies were conducted to examine the impact of a child's psychological disturbance on adults' judgements of causation, blame and punishment for action outcomes portrayed across Heider's levels. The effect of these levels on perceived control and the utility of perceived control in predicting judgements were also investigated. It was found that: (a) the psychological status of the child affected responses for a subset of Heider's levels but did not alter the pattern of responses across levels; and (b) responses were not affected by the existence of a psychological disorder per se but instead appeared to reflect inferences regarding the capacities influenced by the disorder. In addition, perceived control (c) increased across Heider's levels and (d) was more useful than previously investigated subjective probabilities in accounting for variance in perceived cause, blame and punishment. The probability of the act in the situation portrayed also accounted for a unique portion of the variance in the judgements made. The robustness of Heider's levels and a quantitative approach to his criteria are discussed. Finally, suggestions regarding the assessment of capacities necessary for being held accountable for one's actions are outlined.

Children's Evaluations of Retaliatory Aggression

The present study examined how 5-10-year-old children's judgments of retaliation were affected by its severity relative to the initial provocation and by the causal nature of the initial provocation. 72 boys and girls first received information about property-damaging provocations that were portrayed as accidental, foreseeable, justifiably intended, or unjustifiably intended in nature. They were subsequently informed that the victim responded with interpersonal aggression or with a verbal reprimand. Children's perceptions of the causal nature of the provocation and their naughtiness and punishment judgments of the retaliator were assessed. 2 major findings were obtained, both of which were unrelated to age. First, children's perceptions of the initial provocation were more differentiated than has been reported in the past, but these perceptions did not correspond uniformly to the manipulations of causality. Second, although children's evaluations of the retaliator were not an inverse function of their own perceptions of the initial provocation, they did vary systematically according to these perceptions and the extremity of the retaliator's response.

The use of factorial survey design in assessments of public judgments of appropriate punishment for crime

The use of factorial survey design in assessments of public judgments of appropriate punishment for crime

Assignment of Moral Responsibility and Punishment

SHULTZ, THOMAS R.; WRIGHT, KEVIN; and SCHLEIFER, MICHAEL. Assignment of Moral Responsibility and Punishment. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1986, 57, 177-184. A theory of the assignment of moral responsibility and punishment for harm was tested with children 5-11 years of age. The results indicated a fairly sophisticated use of a variety of moral concepts by children from 5 years of age. They showed evidence of knowing that judgments of moral responsibility are presupposed by judgments of punishment and that causal judgments are presupposed by moral responsibility judgments. They also used information on intention and negligence to assign moral responsibility and information on restitution to assign punishment. Developmental trends included an increasing sensitivity to these concepts, greater tolerance for harm doing, and more emphasis on restitution rather than punishment with increasing age.

Children's judgements of causality, responsibility and punishment in cases of harm due to omission

This study investigated causal and moral reasoning in children 5, 7, 9, and 11 years old. The first of two experiments looked at judgements of causality, responsibility, and punishment as a function of necessary or non‐necessary conditions. Children of all ages made use of necessity information in their causal attributions and, to a lesser extent, in their moral attributions. The second of the two experiments investigated excusing conditions in regard to the same three dependent variables. The mitigating factors of voluntariness and foreseeability were manipulated using the same stories (in necessary condition) from Expt 1. All children except the five‐year‐olds made consistent use of the voluntariness information in their causal and moral reasoning. This factor showed significantly increased usage with age. Foreseeability was used in a consistent manner only by seven‐year‐olds; children both younger and older tended to ignore this variable as a mitigating factor. The results of both experiments are discussed in comparison with analogous work done with college students.

Judgments of causation, responsibility, and punishment in cases of harm-doing.

Judgments of causation, responsibility, and punishment in cases of harm-doing.

Group-Induced Polarization in Simulated Juries

Group-induced shift effects observed on other response dimensions were extended to a simulated jury setting. Subjects first responded to eight hypothetical traffic cases which varied in the implication of guilt (high or low), then discussed half of these cases (two high guilt and two low guilt) in small groups, and finally responded again to all eight cases. As predicted, the simulated jury deliberations polarized the mean judgment of discussed cases. After discussing low guilt cases, subjects were, on the average, more extreme in their judgments of innocence and more lenient in recommended punishment, and after discussing high guilt cases shifted toward harsher judgments of guilt and punishment. These effects were not observed for cases which were not discussed.