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Sentencing, severity, and social norms : a rank-based model of contextual influence on judgments of crimes and punishments
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Aldrovandi, Silvio, Wood, Alex M. and Brown, G. D. A. (Gordon D. A.) (2013) Sentencing, severity, and social norms : a rank-based model of contextual influence on judgments of crimes and punishments. Acta psychologica, Volume 144 (Number 3). pp. 538-547. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.09.007 ISSN 0001-6918.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.09.007
Abstract
Context effects have been shown to bias lay people's evaluations of the severity of crimes and punishments. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms behind these effects, we develop and apply a rank-based social norms approach to judgments of perceived crime seriousness and sentence appropriateness. In Study 1, we find that (a) people believe on average that 84% of people illegally download software more than they do themselves and (b) their judged severity of, and concern about, their own illegal software downloading is predicted not by its amount but by how this amount is believed (typically inaccurately) to rank within a social comparison distribution. Studies 2 and 3 find that the judged appropriateness of a given sentence length is highly dependent on the length of other sentences available in the decision-making context: The same objective sentence was judged as approximately four times stricter when it was the second longest sentence being considered than when it was the fifth longest. It is concluded that the same mechanisms that are used to judge the magnitude of psychophysical stimuli bias judgments about legal matters.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Physics | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Acta psychologica | ||||
| Publisher: | Elsevier BV | ||||
| ISSN: | 0001-6918 | ||||
| Official Date: | 2013 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Volume 144 | ||||
| Number: | Number 3 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 538-547 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.09.007 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
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