Punitive authoritarians? Challenging the dual-process model of punitiveness

• In Event: Understanding punishment preferences in the public: New findings from the Central European Social Survey

Abstract

Right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) are routinely used to predict punitiveness and believed by some to form the dispositional basis of punitive attitudes towards offenders. However, the measures of punishment preferences employed in this line of research have been discredited in criminology as vague and biased. Moreover, there is a significant conceptual overlap between the scales measuring authoritarian personality and popular punitiveness items. Using sentencing vignettes instead, this paper first examines an underlying assumption of this line of research — that there is a single underlying punishment trait. We then test whether that trait is accounted for by RWA, its subscales, or SDO. In particular, we provide an examination of the dual-process model of punitiveness, according to which RWA and SDO positively predict unique variance in punishment preferences.

Authors

• Malia Marks, University of Cambridge

• Andrzej Uhl, University of Cambridge

• Paweł Ostaszewski, University of Warsaw and Institute of Justice, Poland