Similarity of Legal Attitudes, Defendant Social Class, and Crime Intentionality as Determinants of Legal Decisions

Abstract

In a simulated legal case, lenient and harsh "law-andorder" attitude subjects judged an upper or lower class defendant who espoused a similar, opposite, or unstated attitude on the matter. The crime was described as either a voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. The intentional crime and the dissimilar attitude defendant drew the harshest sentences from all subjects apparently due to differences in attributions made about the defendant among these conditions. There were no subject or defendant attitude main effects, and social class had no effect whatsoever on sentencing decisions made here, though it has been shown to have impact for other crimes. Results expand our knowledge of extraneous courtroom influences and suggest that some of these factors change meaning in the context of different crimes.

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