Watamura Eiichiro, Ioku Tomohiro, Mukai Tomoya
Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2023 Sep 14;14:1236587. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1236587. eCollection 2023.
This study aimed to test Marshall's third hypothesis-that information about the death penalty hardly affects the attitude of death penalty supporters on retribution grounds-utilizing a non-American sample. Four pre-registered experiments were conducted, involving Japanese participants randomly selected from sample pools of retributivists and non-retributivists, based on their reasons for supporting the death penalty. One group received information exposure, while the other was under control conditions. Participants read about deterrence (Study 1) or false convictions (Study 2-4). Except for the results of Study 4, retributivists and non-retributivists were equally affected or unaffected by information. Marshall's third hypothesis is therefore not supported. Retributivists strongly favored the death penalty; higher empathy toward criminals was associated with less pro-death penalty attitudes. Additionally, there were differences in the influence of information. These results suggest the need for a new approach to researching the relationship between public attitudes and information on the death penalty.
本研究旨在利用非美国样本检验马歇尔的第三个假设，即关于死刑的信息几乎不会影响死刑支持者基于报应理由的态度。我们进行了四项预先注册的实验，参与者为从报应主义者和非报应主义者样本库中随机选取的日本参与者，选取依据是他们支持死刑的理由。一组接受信息暴露，另一组处于控制条件下。参与者阅读关于威慑（研究1）或错判（研究2 - 4）的内容。除了研究4的结果外，报应主义者和非报应主义者受到信息的影响程度相同或未受影响。因此，马歇尔的第三个假设未得到支持。报应主义者强烈支持死刑；对罪犯更高的同理心与较少支持死刑的态度相关。此外，信息的影响存在差异。这些结果表明需要一种新的方法来研究公众态度与死刑信息之间的关系。
