In the name of democracy: The value of democracy explains leniency towards wrongdoings as a function of group political organization

Abstract

According to the “democracy‐as‐value” hypothesis, democracy has become an ideological belief system providing social value to democratic individuals, groups and institutions, granting legitimacy to their actions (even if dishonest or violent), and protecting them from consecutive punishments. The present research investigates the extent to which this legitimizing process is based on the individual endorsement of democratic principles. Across four experiments, following the misdeed of a (few) group member(s), respondents who valued democratic group organization and democracy in general expressed more lenient retributive justice judgments towards democratic (as compared with nondemocratic) offender groups. These findings shed light on the ways in which democratic ideology infuses justice judgments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Collective punishment depends on collective responsibility and political organization of the target group

“…Contrary to prior research showing that people are motivated to protect democratic groups from punishment (Falomir-Pichastor, Falomir-Pichastor et al, 2007;Pereira et al, 2014), the present research evidenced situations in which people demonstrate more severity in their retributive judgments directed at democratic groups. These findings are consistent with other studies showing that democratic groups are not always protected from punishment, as compared to nondemocratic ones, for example in situations where the victim group is also democratic or unspecified (Falomir-Pichastor et al, 2007;Staerklé, Falomir-Pichastor, Pereira, & Butera, in preparation).…”

“…Similar findings have also been shown in the context of alleged interstate armed conflicts (Falomir-Pichastor, . This leniency effect has been shown to emerge as a function of the value ascribed to democracy (Pereira, Falomir-Pichastor, Berent, Staerklé, & Butera, 2014) and to be mediated by the perceived value of the offender group (Falomir-Pichastor et al, 2007). Overall these findings demonstrate that the value of democracy infuses retributive judgments in such a way that people show more lenient judgments towards democratic (vs. nondemocratic) groups.…”

“…Valorization of democracy was measured with 8 items (see Pereira et al, 2014). Participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with 8 statements in relation to democracy (e.g., I prefer democracy over other forms of government, I value democracy as a political system, people are happier when living in a democratic country as compared to other forms of government, etc.)…”

Why we sometimes punish the innocent: The role of group entitativity in collective punishment

“…In spite of that, punishments often are inflicted upon people for a wrongdoing that they did not commit: Collective punishments entail situations in which an entire group is punished for a wrongdoing perpetrated only by a subset of its group members [ 9 ]. Support for such treatments has been shown to be shaped by the group’s political organization [ 9 ], collective responsibility [ 10 ], as well as by perceptions of value-violations from the offender group [ 11 ].…”

Global value perceptions: The legitimising functions of western representations of democracy

“…In particular, we wanted to identify individual‐level moderators in order to examine for whom the phenomenon is more or less likely to occur. In a series of studies (Pereira, Falomir‐Pichastor, Berent, Staerklé, & Butera, ), we examined how individual preference for a democratic or nondemocratic group organisation affected judgements. The straightforward prediction was that individuals who strongly endorsed the value of democracy should exhibit a greater tendency to base their judgements on the value of democracy, compared to those with a weaker endorsement of democratic group organisation.…”