Blame Attribution for White-Collar Crime in France and the United States: Comparative Profiles of Public Attitudes

• In Event: Comparative and Cross-National Comparisons of Attitudes and Perceptions of Laws, Legal Systems, Offenders and Punitiveness

Abstract

This study profiles and compares French and US subjects based on their attribution of blame for white-collar crime. 1,068 respondents (536 from the US and 532 from France) answered an online survey that measured their level of knowledge about white-collar crime, their sociodemographic characteristics, and their blame attributional styles. Cluster analysis was used to identify distinct and homogeneous categories of participants. More groups emerged in the US sample, suggesting more complex attitudes towards white-collar crime among American respondents. More knowledgeable subjects tended to endorse a dispositional attribution style, and significant sociodemographic variation was found in blame attribution. This study confirms the importance of knowledge about white-collar crime in shaping overall attitudes towards it and, in turn, influencing punishment orientations.

Author

• Cedric Michel, University of Tampa