The Pragmatic American
Empirical Reality or Methodological Artifact
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9680071 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justin T Pickett (0000-0002-8519-2659, School of Criminal Justice University at Albany SUNY, corresponding author), Thomas Baker (0000-0003-2874-4055, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs Virginia Commonwealth University) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 195-222 |
| Publication date | 2014-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-1384 • E-ISSN: 1745-9125 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1745-9125.12035 |
| OpenAlex | W1848244981 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 62 |
| References cited | 72 |
Scholars widely agree that the public is pragmatic about criminal justice. The empirical basis for this conclusion is the failure in several previous studies to find a sizable negative relationship between dispositional and situational crime attributions, or between support for punitive and rehabilitative crime policies. We suggest, however, that public pragmatism may be an artifact of the use of unidirectional question batteries in prior research to measure attribution styles and policy support. When such questions are used, acquiescent responding can introduce systematic error that is positively correlated across items and scales. Drawing on data from an experiment with a national sample (N = 826) of Internet panelists, we examine how this methodological approach impacts the bivariate correlations and multivariate relationships between attribution styles and between support for punitive and rehabilitative crime policies. The findings reveal that using unidirectional sets of questions to measure these concepts likely results in 1) inflated alpha reliability coefficients, 2) an underestimation of the magnitude of the negative relationships between attribution styles and between punitiveness and support for rehabilitation, and 3) an underestimation of the extent to which punitiveness and support for rehabilitation are driven by the same factors, working in opposite directions
Artifact (error · Attribution · Bivariate analysis · Empirical research · Epistemology · Judgement · Political science · Punitive damages · Situational ethics · Computer Science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
Why are conservatives more punitive than liberals? A moral foundations approach.
On the Social Foundations for Crimmigration
The Scary World of Online News? Internet News Exposure and Public Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice
The Punitiveness of the Mass Public
Attributions as Anchors
Judging Hardworking Robbers and Lazy Thieves
Understanding Gun Ownership in the Twenty-First Century
Political Ideology and Attitudes Toward Pretrial Justice
Punishing Rampage
Introducing Item-Specific Formatting to Scales of Criminal Justice Attitudes
Too Harsh for Me but Not for Thee? Threat Control, Personal Freedom, and Perception of Pandemic Policy
Assessing Public Support for Collateral and Other Consequences of Criminal Convictions
Toward a method for evaluating court actor influences on plea negotiations
The Pragmatic American Revisited
Public Support for “Get Smart” Criminal Justice Reform Post-2020
Conceptualizing and Measuring Public Stigma Toward People With Prison Records
Public Support for Drug Courts
Belief in Redeemability and Punitive Public Opinion
Attribution Matters
Decreased Bi-Partisan Support for Pretrial Detention in Less Serious Cases
Legalize It, Criticize It, or Something Else? Americans’ Attitudes Toward Federal Recreational Marijuana Legislation (RML)
Public Opinion Toward Diverse Types of Police Reform Post-2020
Criminological Explanations, Race, and Biological Attributions of Crime as Predictors of Philadelphia Area Residents’ Support for Criminal Justice Policies
Up in Smoke
If Looks Could Kill
The Hidden Measurement Crisis in Criminology
How do college students in Ukraine and the United States view criminal offenders
Racial Sentiment and Public Support for Arming Teachers with Guns in the United States
Racial resentment, crime concerns, and public attitudes toward defunding the police
How politics constrain the public’s understanding of terrorism
We Are All the Same and (Not) Judged the Same? Examining Attribution Tendencies of Liberals in the Context of Norm Violations by Refugees
Measuring people in prison's perceptions of correctional officer procedural justice
The Extent and Sources of Support for Mitigating Collateral Consequences
Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Policy
Man I’m all torn up inside’
Blame Their Mothers
Police body‐worn camera policies as democratic deficits? Comparing public support for policy alternatives
Rehabilitation in a Red State
What does the public want police to do during pandemics? A national experiment
Public Opinion and Criminal Justice Reform
Victim Compensation Policy and White‐Collar Crime
The structure of public opinion on crime policy
Good governance, political experiences, and public support for mandatory sentencing
Public Opinion About #MeToo Victims and Offenders
Police research, officer surveys, and response rates
Punishing Women for Miscarriage
Racial Attitudes and Criminal Justice Policy
Psychopathy and perceptions of procedural justice
Procedurally just cooperation
Culpabilización a las víctimas de delitos
Racial attitudes and belief in redeemability
Toward a Better Understanding of Politicized Policing Attitudes
Holding Justice Accountable
Not That Important Why You Did It
On the Measurement and Properties of Ambiguity in Probabilistic Expectations
Are Racial and Educational Inequities in Mass Incarceration Perceived to be a Social Problem? Results from an Experiment
Comparative study of punitive attitudes among American and Italian college students
Racial Sympathy and Support for Capital Punishment
The Extent and Correlates of Public Support for Deterrence Reforms and Hot Spots Policing
Moral Foundations, Intuitions of Justice, and the Intricacies of Punitive Sentiment
An Analysis of Black-White Racial Differences in Public Support for Nonviolent Sentencing Reform
What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro's Truth Commission, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes toward Racial Redress
Tides of Consent
Attribution, Salience, and Attitudes toward Criminal Sanctioning
Modeling Acquiescence in Measurement Models for Two Balanced Sets of Items
Research Note
Response Styles in Marketing Research
What is coefficient alpha? An examination of theory and applications.
American Public Opinion
Three Strikes and You Are Out, but Why? The Psychology of Public Support for Punishing Rule Breakers
Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys
Testing the Core Empirical Implications of Gottfredson and Hirschi's General Theory of Crime
Inmate Social Ties and the Transition to Society
Public Opinion and Juvenile Justice Policy
Attributionally more complex people show less punitiveness and racism
Testing the Stability of an Acquiescence Style Factor Behind Two Interrelated Substantive Variables in a Panel Design
Public opinion on crime causation
What drives punitive beliefs
Using Balanced Scales to Control Acquiescence
Shaping Citizen Perceptions of Police Legitimacy
The Social Sources of Americans' Punitiveness
Controlling Other People's Children
Viewing Things Differently
Forgiveness and Fundamentalism
Reconsidering the Relationship Between Perceived Neighborhood Racial Composition and Whites’ Perceptions of Victimization Risk
Using the Correct Statistical Test for the Equality of Regression Coefficients
Race, Code of the Street, and Violent Delinquency
Religion, Attribution Style, and Punitiveness Toward Juvenile Offenders
Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, and the Ecology of Arrest
Punitive Sentiment
The Code of the Street and Inmate Violence
Vulnerable Victims, Monstrous Offenders, and Unmanageable Risk
An Assessment of the Attitudes Towards Crime Among Professionals in the Criminal Justice System
Rehabilitation and Repression
National Surveys Via Rdd Telephone Interviewing Versus the Internet
Research Synthesis
Does Mentioning “Some People” and “Other People” in an Opinion Question Improve Measurement Quality
The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale
Dynamic Representation(s)
Does Survey Mode Still Matter? Findings from a 2010 Multi-Mode Comparison
Does Mode Matter For Modeling Political Choice? Evidence From the 2005 British Election Study
The Advent of Internet Surveys for Political Research
State Public Opinion, the Death Penalty, and the Practice of Electing Judges
Measurement Error and the Structure of Attitudes
The Public's Increasing Punitiveness and Its Influence on Mass Incarceration in the United States
Why do we punish? Deterrence and just deserts as motives for punishment
Sentencing goals, causal attributions, ideology, and personality
Affective space is bipolar
"An alternative "description of personality
The origins of symbolic racism
Public Support for Attacking the "Root Causes" of Crime
Survey Research
Thinking about Crime
The Srole Items and Acquiescence
Three Strikes and You Are Out, but Why? The Psychology of Public Support for Punishing Rule Breakers
Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance
Comparing Logit and Probit Coefficients Across Groups
Standardization in Causal Analysis
Not by the Book
Using Heterogeneous Choice Models to Compare Logit and Probit Coefficients Across Groups
Social Organization, Collective Sentiment, and Legal Sanctions in Murder Cases
The racial foundations of whites' support for child saving
The Functions of Symbolic Racism
| Unique citing works | 62 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5,64 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 62 |