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Dangerous, depraved, and death‐worthy: A meta‐analysis of the correlates of perceived psychopathy in jury simulation studies
Author(s) -
Kelley Shan E.,
Edens John F.,
Mowle Elyse N.,
Penson Brittany N.,
Rulseh Allison
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.124
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1097-4679
pISSN - 0021-9762
DOI - 10.1002/jclp.22726
Subject(s) - psychopathy , psychology , jury , sentence , perception , antisocial personality disorder , social psychology , personality , clinical psychology , poison control , injury prevention , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , environmental health , neuroscience , political science , law
Objectives Experimental research suggests that legal defendants described as psychopathic are generally, although not uniformly, judged more negatively and punitively. Understanding the correlates of perceived psychopathy, regardless of exposure to mental health evidence, is an important step towards clarifying divergent findings. Method We conducted a quantitative synthesis of ten juror simulation studies (combined N = 2,980) examining the meta‐analytic association between perceived defendant psychopathy and various psychologically important and legally relevant outcomes. Results Perceiving someone as being more psychopathic was associated with viewing that defendant as more dangerous ( r W = 0.31) and evil ( r W = 0.44). Moreover, perceptions of defendant psychopathy predicted greater support for more adverse consequences in terms of capital sentencing ( r W = 0.22) and sentence length ( r W = 0.27), although not perceived treatment amenability ( r W = 0.09). Conclusions These findings highlight the importance of including ratings of perceived psychopathy in experimental designs to identify the circumstances under which psychopathy evidence might prejudicially impact case outcomes.