Degree of Prescribed Punishment as a Function of Subjects' Authoritarianism and Offenders' Race and Social Status

Bibliographic Data

ID13659082
AuthorsThomas A McAbee (University of South Carolina, corresponding author), Thomas P Cafferty (University of South Carolina)
Year1982
Volume50
Issue2
Pages651-654
Publication date1982-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychological Reports (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-2941 • E-ISSN: 1558-691X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2466/pr0.1982.50.2.651
OpenAlexW1976907659
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited10

The amount of punishment prescribed for an offender by low, middle, or high authoritarians was examined in a sample of 198 subjects (135 undergraduate psychology students and 63 church members). Subjects completed a forced-choice form of the F scale and read a case history of a juvenile offender who was described as either a middle-class white, a middle-class black, a lower-class white, or a lower-class black. Subjects were asked to recommend an amount of punishment for the offender on a punishment scale. Consistent with previous research on authoritarianism, the high authoritarians recommended more punishment for the offender than the low authoritarians. However, high authoritarians prescribed more punishment for the middle-class rather than the lower-class offender, and did so regardless of offenders' race

Authoritarianism · Developmental psychology · Juvenile delinquency · Middle class · Political science · Punishment (psychology · Race (biology · Social class · Sociology · White (mutation · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Social Psychology

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