Why people punish.Many people say that they believe in punishing criminals only to deter further offenses, but a study of people's decisions as mock jurors overwhelmingly suggests that they would punish lawbreakers for the purpose of retribution. "What's fascinating is that people don't seem to know why they punish," says Kevin Carlsmith of Colgate University Colgate University Private university in Hamilton, N.Y. It was founded in 1819 as a Baptist-affiliated institution but became independent in 1928. It offers primarily a liberal arts curriculum for undergraduates, with some master's degree programs in arts and teaching. in Hamilton, N.Y. Scientists call the main categories of punishment utilitarian, for deterring crime, and retributive re·trib·u·tive adj. Of, involving, or characterized by retribution; retributory. re·trib  u·tive·ly adv.Adj. 1. , for making a criminal suffer. Few previous studies have explored what motivates punishments, and those studies simply asked people why they favored a sentence. Carlsmith's three-part study, which appears in the July Journal of Experimental Social Psychology The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology is a scientific journal published by the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP). It publishes original empirical papers on subjects like social cognition, attitudes, group processes, social influence, intergroup relations, , evaluates the type of information people consider when deciding on a punishment. In the first test, 132 subjects imagined themselves as jurors and ranked crime-related information in order of its relevance to a sentence. They consistently ranked retributive information, such as criminal intent, higher than utilitarian information, such as a criminal's record. In a second test, 42 subjects received nine pieces of information relating to relating to relate prep → concernant relating to relate prep → bezüglich +gen, mit Bezug auf +acc a crime and selected which was most useful in determining a sentence. Ninety-seven percent of subjects chose a piece of retributive information. A final test revealed that 35 subjects who based their sentences on retributive information were substantially more confident that the punishment they had selected was correct than were subjects who based their sentences on utilitarian information. Previous research had shown that when asked for the justification behind criminal punishment, people generally split their responses between utility and retribution. Asking someone why he or she would impose punishment is a flawed method because people often don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. what's behind their decisions, says John Darley John Darley (b. April 3 1938) is a distinguished American social psychologist, who has made contributions to the study of helping behaviour. Darley studied at Swarthmore College from 1956 to 1960, obtaining his Bachelor's degree (1960), and later attended Harvard University, of Princeton University Princeton University, at Princeton, N.J.; coeducational; chartered 1746, opened 1747, rechartered 1748, called the College of New Jersey until 1896. Schools and Research Facilities .--E.J. |
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