Justice at any cost? The impact of cost–benefit salience on criminal punishment judgments

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of cost–benefit salience on simulated criminal punishment judgments. In two vignette‐based survey experiments, we sought to identify how the salience of decision costs influences laypeople's punishment judgments. In both experiments (N1 = 109; N2 = 398), undergraduate participants made sentencing judgments with and without explicit information about the direct, material costs of incarceration. Using a within‐subjects design, Experiment 1 revealed that increasing the salience of incarceration costs mitigated punishments. However, when costs were not made salient, punishments were no lower than those made when the costs were externalized (i.e., paid by a third party). Experiment 2 showed the same pattern using a between‐subjects design. We conclude that, when laypeople formulate sentencing attitudes without exposure to the costs of the punishment, they are prone to discount those costs, behaving as if punishment is societally cost‐free. However, when cost information is salient, they utilize it, suggesting the operation of a genuine, albeit labile, punishment preference. We discuss the implications of these findings for psychological theories of decision making and for sentencing policy, including the degree of transparency about the relevant costs of incarceration during the decision process.

Slippery scales: Cost prompts, but not benefit prompts, modulate sentencing recommendations in laypeople

“…Our pattern of results aligns closely with other research, including studies of sentencing attitudes [18][19][20][21]38], showing that cost prompts can induce people to trade off these so-called sacred values [39]. The present results extend these previous findings by demonstrating that the effect of cost-benefit salience on punishment judgments may be specific to costs and may represent an implicit effect of cognitive availability, as opposed to a calculated response to gaining new insight about the costs of incarceration.…”

“…Finally, our conclusions are limited by the type of crime examined, namely drug trafficking. Previous research has found similar effects of cost information using cases of aggravated robbery and home invasion [20,21]. We do not necessarily expect punishers to consider the costs of incarceration for the most serious crimes, such as murder, even after being prompted.…”

“…The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of decision cost and benefit salience on sentencing attitudes of lay adults about juvenile offenders. We reasoned, based on our earlier work [20,21], that when people formulate punishment judgments, they neglect to consider the costs unless explicitly prompted, but do not neglect the benefits. As a result, we predicted that prompting people to think about the benefits should not increase their sentencing recommendations, but prompting them to think about the costs should reduce these recommendations.…”

“…But when no cost information was presented, sentencing recommendations were no different from those made under cost-free conditions. To the extent the cost-free condition captures people's free punishment choices absent any self-interested motivations, then the overall pattern suggests that when cost information is not provided at all, people who would otherwise factor that information into their judgments punish as if cost is not a factor [20,21]. In other words, cost information does not provoke people to punish less than they intend; rather, people genuinely value the cost information, but without explicit prompting, they neglect to consider it.…”

Is It All About Retribution? The Flexibility of Punishment Goals

“…Such a neglect of long-term effects of decisions has also been found in punishment behavior. For example, recent research has shown that individuals generally do not incorporate the costs of incarceration into their punishment preferences, unless information about such costs is made explicitly salient (Aharoni, Kleider-Offutt, Brosnan, & Watzek, 2018). Given that the support for utilitarian punishment requires, by definition, a forward-oriented thinking about punishment (i.e., taking long-term effects into account), punishers may only consider pursuing such punishment goals if information related to utilitarian aspects of the crime situation is salient.…”