Defendants' age and severity of punishment for two crimes in a mock scenario: further data

95 undergraduates read a simulated crime vignette about either murder or theft in which the perpetrator was a 20-, 40-, or 60-yr.-old man, then gave recommendations about sentence and parole. Subsequently, they made a second set of recommendations for the other crime and another age. For combined sets of judgments, punishment was harsher for the murder than for the theft. For murder, the 60-yr.-old and the 20-yr.-old were both treated more leniently than the 40-yr.-old, but the difference was greater for the older than for the younger offender. Researchers should examine age in relation to judgments for different crimes with participants exposed to all experimental conditions.     

How type of excuse defense, mock juror age, and defendant age affect mock jurors' decisions

The authors investigated the effects of mock juror age (younger vs. older), defendant age (22 vs. 65), and type of excuse defense used by defendants (a highly self-inflicted condition, Cocaine Dependency Disorder, vs. a less self-inflicted condition, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) on mock juror decisions. Ninety-six younger and 96 older adults read a scenario and answered a questionnaire. Results indicated that the defendant using the highly self-inflicted excuse was more likely to receive a guilty verdict and a longer sentence than was the defendant using the less self-inflicted excuse. Older jurors were more certain of their verdicts and saw the defendant as more responsible for his condition than did younger jurors. Defendant age did not affect juror decisions. In addition, excuse type and juror age affected the jurors' perceptions of the victim's responsibility for the attack. The authors discuss the potential influence of juror age on perceptions of defendant responsibility.     

Effects of punishment on response latency in extraverts

Previous findings indicate that in comparison to introverts, extraverts are prone to form responses that are resistant to interruption by punishment. Because the tendency to stop and reflect following punishment may be crucial for subsequent learning, the present study was designed to examine differences between introverts' and extraverts' reactions to punishment using response latency on the trial following punishment as the dependent variable. Sixty-six extraverted and 66 introverted male undergraduates performed a pattern-matching task in which they received noncontingent 50% success and 50% failure feedback under three incentive conditions including reward only, punishment only, or both. As predicted, a significant interaction was found in the both condition, reflecting the tendency of extraverts to respond more quickly and introverts more slowly following punishment feedback than following reward feedback. No significant effects were found in the other two conditions; however, a tendency was noted for extraverts to respond more quickly overall when only reward was given. A second experiment using reward-only and punishment-only feedback replicated this finding and yielded a significant interaction of Group X Condition. The results indicate that in contrast to introverts, extraverts are activated by the availability of reward and, paradoxically, that punishment may facilitate rather than interrupt extraverts' reward seeking behavior.     

Effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine on responding suppressed by conditioned punishment

Key pecking by two pigeons, maintained under a variable-interval two-minute schedule of food presentation, was suppressed when each response produced a five-second visual stimulus that was occasionally paired with shock. Stimulus-shock pairings occurred independently of responding according to a variable-time six-minute schedule for one bird or once per session for the other bird. The effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine were assessed on this baseline of behavior suppressed by conditioned punishment. Chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in the rate of punished responding, whereas d-amphetamine produced only decreases. In addition, chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in response rate during the response-produced and response-independent stimulus presentations; d-amphetamine, however, only decreased responding during stimulus presentations.     

Sentencing,severity, and social norms: A rank-based model of contextual influence on judgments of crimes and punishments

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.     

Perceptions of punishment for crime

A survey questionnaire administered to 662 university undergraduates is used to assess patterns of perceptions of punishment. Results show that the nature of the crime, characteristics of criminal offenders, and characteristics of respondents affect the nature of punishment assigned for 25 criminal offenses.     

Effects of vicarious reward and punishment on social imitation in chronic psychotics

Despite considerable evidence that modeling procedures provide effective methods for the acquisition and change of behavior, there is very little research on the effects of vicarious reward, and none on the effects of vicarious punishment, on social imitation in chronic psychotics. Two studies (Goldstein et al., 1973: Gutride, Goldstein and Hunter, 1973) demonstrated the superiority of vicarious reward over no-treatment with adult psychotics. However, in neither study was a model no-consequences group included in order to control for the effects of observation per se; therefore, such findings cannot be clearly attributed to vicarious reinforcement (Thelen and Rennie, 1972). The only other study known to bear on this issue revealed no differences in initial learning between a model-rewarded and a model no-consequences group (Olson, 1971).The present study included model no-consequences control groups in an attempt to examine the effects of vicarious reward and punishment on subsequent interview behavior in chronic psychotics. Drawing on the larger body of vicarious learning research (Bandura, 1969). it was hypothesized that such patients demonstrate higher levels of socially appropriate behavior after observation of a model who is (a) rewarded for appropriate behavior or (b) punished for inappropriate responses, and lower levels of appropriate behavior after exposure to a model who is (c) rewarded for inappropriate behavior or (d) punished for appropriate responses, relative to conditions in which the same modeled behaviors elicit no contingent consequences.     

The effects of defendant conduct on jury damage awards

Laws of negligence dictate that jurors' decisions about damages be influenced by the severity of plaintiffs' injuries and not by the reprehensibility of defendants' conduct. The authors simulated an automobile negligence trial to assess whether jurors' decisions are in accord with those expectations. Conduct of the defendant and severity of the plaintiff's injuries were manipulated. Jurors listened to the evidence, completed predeliberation questionnaires, deliberated as a jury, and completed postdeliberation questionnaires. Severity of the plaintiff's injury had a strong impact on damage awards, but evidence related to the defendant's conduct was also influential, particularly when the plaintiffs injuries were mild. Here, jurors with any conduct-related evidence gave larger damage awards than jurors with no conduct-related evidence. Findings suggest an effect of defendant conduct on damage awards that may be mediated by judgments that the defendant was negligent.     

Escape conditioning and goal punishment: Effects of acquisition trials,initial punishment trials,and CS extent

In the first of three experiments in which albino rats were given spaced shockescape trials in a straight runway, groups of 6 animals were given 6 or 24 trials followed by extinction, with or without goal-box punishment. Punishment facilitated behavior after 24 trials but did not significantly affect it after 6. Both punishment and 24 trials led to more “abrupt” extinction. In the second experiment, 6 groups of 6 animals received 6, 12, or 24 trials followed by 54 extinction trials with or without goal punishment on the first 18. All punished groups ran self-punitively, and acquisition trials effects were apparent during and after punishment. In the third experiment, buzzer extent, or duration, was manipulated, and longer extents produced stronger self-punitive effects. The results of all three experiments were interpreted in the context of presumed directive effects of aversive and conditioned aversive stimuli.     

On the assignment of punishment: the impact of general-societal threat and the moderating role of severity

This article reports experiments assessing how general threats to social order and severity of a crime can influence punitiveness. Results consistently showed that when participants feel that the social order is threatened, they behave more punitively toward a crime perpetrator, but only when severity associated with a crime was relatively moderate. Evidence is presented to suggest that people can correct-at least to a degree-for the "biasing" influence of these inductions. Finally, threats to social order appear to increase punitiveness by arousing a retributive desire to see individuals pay for what they have done, as opposed to a purely utilitarian desire to deter future wrongdoing. The authors suggest that individuals sometimes act as intuitive prosecutors when ascribing punishment to an individual transgressor based on their perception of general societal control efficacy.     

Effects of training on age estimation

This study examined the possibility to improve accuracy of age estimates through training. Thirty‐four participants were divided into an experimental and a control group. The sessions included a pre‐test before training, six feedback or no‐feedback training tests and a post‐test after training. The experimental group performed the feedback tests and the control group the no‐feedback tests. Training was found to improve age estimation accuracy, particularly estimations of old stimuli, and training with feedback seemed to be superior to training without feedback. No difference was found between the groups at pre‐test, but at post‐test the experimental group exhibited greater accuracy in age estimation. Moreover, the experimental group increased its accuracy between the pre‐ and post‐tests. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of age on flashbulb memories

The authors investigated the effect of aging on flashbulb (FB) memories. In 1996, elderly Turks recalled how they had heard about 2 remote events--the death of the first president of Turkey (in 1938) and another event involving a change in the national borders of the country (in 1939)--and both elderly and younger adults recalled how they heard about the recent death of the 8th president of Turkey (in 1993). Seventy percent of the elderly had FB memories for the 1938 death; critical variables for the formation of FB memories were personal importance attached to the event and rehearsal. Ninety percent of younger Turks and 72% of elderly Turks had FB memories for the 1993 death; the only variable that differed between the 2 groups was rehearsal.