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Does content matter? The effect of remorseful tone on length of prison sentence
Author(s) -
Lo Lap Yan,
AuYeung On Na,
Lin Muriel
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
asian journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.5
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-839X
pISSN - 1367-2223
DOI - 10.1111/ajsp.12112
Subject(s) - remorse , shame , psychology , sorrow , punishment (psychology) , prison , sentence , content (measure theory) , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , tone (literature) , disinhibition , communication , criminology , linguistics , neuroscience , mathematical analysis , philosophy , mathematics
The expression of remorse by offenders has been found to affect jurors' determination of length of prison sentences. This study explores this phenomenon by contrasting the impact of exercising remorse solely in words or through emotional tone. Remorse consists of guilt, shame and sorrow. This study examines the contribution of each of these emotions to judgements about prison sentences, which is an area seldom explored in the literature. It is shown that regardless of the gender of the offender, participants censured a significantly more severe punishment for the offender who expressed a sense of remorse using words rather than tone. In addition, only shame was a significant predictor of the severity of punishment. These findings are consistent with previous studies and further differentiate the influence of displaying remorse at the content and tonal levels.