What You Did Only Matters if You Are One of Us

Offenders’ Group Membership Moderates the Effect of Criminal History on Punishment Severity

Bibliographic Data

ID5339017
AuthorsMario Gollwitzer (0000-0003-4310-4793, University of Koblenz and Landau), Livia Keller (University of Koblenz and Landau)
Year2010
Volume41
Issue1
Pages20-26
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1864-9335 • E-ISSN: 2151-2590
PublisherHogrefe Publishing Group (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1027/1864-9335/a000004
OpenAlexW1919580432
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited41

Research has demonstrated that repeat offenders are generally punished more severely than first-time offenders. In the present article, we argue that this should particularly be true if the offender is a member of one's own social category. A group of 86 students were told about a fellow student who hid books from the university library. The student was either an ingroup or an outgroup member and was either a first-time or a repeat offender. As expected, repeat ingroup offenders were more severely punished than first-time ingroup offenders; this effect was mediated by anger/outrage and societal concerns. If the offender was an outgroup member, however, criminal history did not influence punitive reactions

Anger · Criminology · Ingroups and outgroups · Outgroup · Outrage · Political science · Punitive damages · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Law · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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