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Effects of Reward and Coercion for Transgression Compliance on Judgments of Responsibility and Recommended Punishment
Author(s) -
Greitemeyer Tobias,
Weiner Bernard
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.0021-9029.2006.00140.x
Subject(s) - punishment (psychology) , psychology , compliance (psychology) , coercion (linguistics) , commit , social psychology , context (archaeology) , criminology , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , database , computer science , biology
Previous research (Greitemeyer & Weiner, 2003) has demonstrated that compliance to commit a transgression for an anticipated reward as opposed to an anticipated punishment results in greater inferences of personal responsibility. The present studies extend these findings to a courtroom context in which punishment decisions are made. In Study 1, a nurse who administered a non‐approved drug was perceived as more responsible; and more severe punishment decisions were recommended, given compliance for an offered reward relative to a threatened punishment. These findings subsequently were replicated while varying the consequences of the drug administration (Study 2) and employing an antisocial scenario (Study 3). Legal theory, field theory, and prospect theory are discussed as possible explanations for these phenomena.