Dimensional Structure of Judgments of Crimes1

This research explored the correlates and dimensionality of judgments of crimes varying widely in seriousness, and the structure of their mental representation. In Experiment 1, 27 crimes were judged independently along 12 scales. A principal-factors analysis of interscale correlations yielded a major factor of evaluation, best defined by scales of seriousness, moral wrongfulness, and severity of deserved punishment. Judgments concerning perceptions of probability of conviction, punishment given, likelihood of physical harm, offender dangerousness, and degree of understanding also loaded on the evaluation factor. The second factor was Frequency of Occurrence. The results were generally stable at the local levels of person crimes and nonperson crimes. In Experiment 2 crime stimuli were subjected to pairwise similarity judgments that were analyzed using the Kruskal-Shepard MDSCAL and Sattath-Tversky ADDTREE procedures. MDSCAL yielded an interpretable two-dimensional representation and permitted approximate recovery of the seriousness ordering of crimes. The ADDTREE solution yielded two major partitionings, of person versus nonperson crimes, and several psychologically significant nested subsets clustered within each partition. The two psychometric outcomes were congruent. The overall results confirm a primary dimension of evaluation/seriousness. Implications for research in criminology and the comparative merits of similarity judgments versus single-scale seriousness ratings of crimes are discussed.