A Reevaluation of the Hydraulic Relation Hypothesis

• In Event: Views on Punitive, Rehabilitative, and Reentry Policies

Abstract

Prior work suggests that the public is highly pragmatic about criminal justice. Evidence for pragmatism comes from the lack of a negative relationship between punitive and rehabilitative crime policy preferences and between dispositional and situational crime attributions. Recent research drawing on a survey based experiment of internet panelists found that public pragmatism may be an artifact of acquiescent responding (Pickett and Baker, 2014). Specifically, the use of unidirectional question batteries in prior research to measure attribution styles and policy support may introduce systematic error that inflates alpha reliability coefficients and underestimates the negative relationship between punitive and rehabilitative policy preferences and between dispositional and situational crime attributions. However, Pickett and Baker’s (2014) experiment uses a sample of internet panelists that have experience responding to surveys, which may impact the generalizability of their findings to less-experienced survey takers. More generally, scholars emphasize the importance of replicating experimental results for developing an accurate body of knowledge. For these reasons, the current study replicates Pickett and Baker’s (2014) experiment using a sample of college students. The findings will provide further evidence about whether the pragmatic attitudes observed in prior studies primarily reflect response acquiescence.

Authors

• Thomas R. Baker, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Justin T. Pickett, University at Albany, SUNY