The oprahization of America: Sympathetic crime talk and leniency

Abstract

Respondents were exposed to a series of talk‐show programs (all from the Oprah Winfrey Show) on crime and alternative issues and later, in a purportedly unrelated study, asked to make punitive recommendations for offenders convicted of various nonviolent and violent crimes. The programs differed in that (a) two featured criminal cases in which the offenders and their sympathizers were allowed to provide crime‐mitigating information, (b) two others presented the same cases with the mitigating information removed, and (c) two reported situations unrelated to crime. Punitiveness toward criminal offenders was significantly lower after exposure to crime‐mitigating programs than after exposure to programs unrelated to crime. This effect was observed for both nonviolent and violent crime.

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