The Influence In News Stories Of Criminal Intentionality And Criminal And Victim Affective Dispositions On Support For Policy About Alcohol Crimes

Abstract

This dissertation tests the rationalist and intuitionist sequences for forming moral judgments about people in media, proposed by Lee and Shapiro (2014), and applies those sequences to explaining processes whereby news stories about alcoholrelated crimes influence readers' support for two types of policies: punitive policies aiming to punish perpetrators and preventive policies aiming to prevent alcoholrelated crimes. Following the rationalist sequence, Study 1 tested the role of intentionality. In an experiment, participants were randomly assigned either to the intentional condition (an owner of a liquor shop sold an alcohol beverage to an underage minor intentionally) or to the unintentional condition (the owner sold the beverage unintentionally). Participants blamed and disliked the owner in the intentional condition more than in the unintentional condition and the increased blame judgment was associated with disliking of the owner and with participants' increased support for both punitive and preventive policies. Study 2, following the intuitionist sequence, tested the role of affective dispositions (i.e., liking or disliking) toward a perpetrator and a victim of a car accident caused by drunk driving. The results supported hypotheses driven by the intuitionist sequence in several ways. First, when the perpetrator was a liked administrator, participants blamed the perpetrator less than when the perpetrator was a disliked administrator. Second, when the perpetrator was a liked administrator, a liked coach victim led participants to blame the perpetrator more than a disliked coach victim; however, no effect of victim was found when the perpetrator was a disliked administrator. Third, when participants were asked about their alcohol use at the beginning of the study, they supported preventive policies more when the perpetrator was a liked administrator than when the perpetrator was a disliked one. On the other hand, when participants were asked about their alcohol use at the end of the study, participants supported punitive policies less when the perpetrator was a liked administrator than when the perpetrator was a disliked one. Theoretical and practical implications and future study directions are discussed.