Essentialist thinking predicts culpability and punishment judgments

Genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality predict harshness of recommended punishment.

“…Across these different decisions, different components mattered; for example, discreteness predicted recommendation for less prison time (but more interest in retribution), whereas informativeness and inherence predicted recommendation for longer prison time. In related work, essentialist beliefs about crime (particularly regarding how cohesive a crime category was perceived, e.g., perceiving crimes as uniform and sharing a deep commonality) also predicted length of recommended prison sentence (Xu et al, 2022).…”

“…Further, studies also show that people often expect moral conscience to be core to one’s identity (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014), and immoral or criminal behavior to be rooted in a material and bodily basis (e.g., Donnelly et al, 2011; Meyer et al, 2013). Finally, a range of crimes (such as rape, murder, sexual assault, and arson) are often construed as having a natural or biological origin (Berryessa, 2020; de Vel-Palumbo et al, 2019; Martin et al, in press; Xu et al, 2022). These data together point to the idea that people often believe in an intrinsic and biological causal force underlying criminal behavior, consistent with genetic essentialist beliefs.…”

“…In light of contemporary scientific and popular discussions regarding how genes are implicated in complex human behavior, directly addressing people’s lay genetic essentialist beliefs is an important focus to include when exploring attributions for crime, and whether these beliefs matter for relevant and societally important attitudes about punishment and crime prevention. Past work obtained mixed evidence regarding how the biological component of psychological essentialism predicted punishment judgments, sometimes yielding a positive correlation, sometimes a negative correlation, and sometimes no correlation (Allen et al, 2019; Appelbaum et al, 2015; Aspinwall et al, 2012; Berryessa, 2020; Dar-Nimrod et al, 2011; de Vel-Palumbo et al, 2019; Lynch et al, 2019; Martin et al, in press; Martin & Heiphetz, 2021; Monterosso et al, 2005; Robbins & Litton, 2017; Scurich & Appelbaum, 2016; Xu et al, 2022). We had no directional predictions regarding the association between genetic essentialism and punishment.…”

“…Specifically, we assessed the degree to which participants held genetic essentialist attitudes toward a donor described as having committed a violent murder by asking them how possible it was for a child conceived using the donor’s sperm to display similar behavior in the future. “Violent murderer” was selected as the donor type of focus based on past research suggesting that such individuals are often essentialized (e.g., Berryessa, 2020; Martin et al, in press; Meyer et al, 2013; Xu et al, 2022). We also included one donor type (tall) who we assumed would receive high heritability judgments, given the known role of genetic factors in influencing a person's height (McEvoy & Visscher, 2009), and another donor type (speaking French) who we assumed would receive low heritability judgments given the known role of environmental factors in influencing the language a person speaks.…”

“…We predicted that genetic essentialism would be highest for the most serious crimes, given that violent or otherwise highly harmful crimes are often difficult to explain on the basis of ordinary motivations, and so might reflect something fundamental, inborn, and distinct from typical individuals. At the same time, we expected some degree of genetic essentialism even for lower-harm crimes, given that many human characteristics are essentialized, including antisocial or negative behaviors (e.g., Giles, 2003;Heyman & Gelman, 2000;Meyer et al, 2020), and that prior research focused specifically on criminal and antisocial behaviors has indicated some level of essentialist beliefs (including biological components) for actions ranging in severity (e.g., Berryessa, 2020;de Vel-Palumbo et al, 2019;Lebowitz et al, 2019;Xu et al, 2022). To incorporate more variety, we included both property-targeted and person-targeted crimes within each level of harm, though this variation in target was not a focus of the analyses (online supplemental materials presents analyses including this factor).…”