A Closer Look at an Eye for an Eye: Laypersons’ Punishment Decisions Are Primarily Driven by Retributive Motives

According to recent research on laypersons’ punitive attitudes people’s sentencing decisions are primarily driven by a desire
for retribution. The research designed to test this notion, however, can be criticized for suffering from several limitations.
Three online-based studies were conducted with samples from Western Europe with the aim of replicating the findings of Carlsmith
(J Exp Soc Psychol 42:437–451, 2006) in which participants’ punishment motives were inferred from their behavior in a process tracing task. In the present research,
this approach was adopted and modified in order to provide a more conservative test for the notion that people mainly care
about retribution. Although these modifications strongly influenced the overall pattern of results, retribution still was
the most important punishment motive in all three studies.

This article investigates the psychometric properties of a self-report inventory for measuring individual differences in four
components of justice sensitivity (JS): victim sensitivity, observer sensitivity, beneficiary sensitivity, and perpetrator
sensitivity. A representative sample (N = 2510) was employed to (a) estimate the reliability of a newly developed perpetrator sensitivity scale, (b) test the factorial
validity of this scale together with three previously developed scales (victim, observer, and beneficiary sensitivity), (c)
estimate correlations between JS and demographic variables (gender, age, education, employment status, marital status, and
residency in East versus West Germany), and (d) provide normative data for the computation of standard scores. A demographically
heterogeneous convenience sample (N = 327) was used to locate the JS dimensions in the personality space of narrow facet factors. Results from confirmatory factor
analyses demonstrated the factorial validity of the JS scales. Regression analyses with JS scales as criteria and personality
facet scales as predictors suggested that JS cannot be reduced to combinations of personality facets. Demographic effects
were small, explaining a maximum of 1.4% of JS variance. Women and East Germans were found to be more justice sensitive than
men and West Germans, respectively. Victim sensitivity decreased with age; perpetrator sensitivity decreased with education.
Taken together, our results corroborate the validity of the JS Inventory and contribute to a better psychological understanding
of JS.

This research addresses system justification tendencies in the United States and Hungary and their potential to shape reactions
to equity–equality tradeoffs in the workplace. Participants in both nations were asked to rate the fairness of, their satisfaction
with, and the typicality of four hypothetical work situations. These scenarios differed in terms of which distributive justice
principle was violated (equity or equality) and whether the violation favored the participant or the co-worker (self or other).
While the mean level of system justification was lower in Hungary than in the U.S., multilevel models revealed that in both
societal contexts the motivation to justify the system was associated with participants’ perceptions of justice in the workplace.
Based on the characteristics of the two social systems, however, these tendencies played out differently. Specifically, for
the U.S. participants system justification was associated with more favorable views of work situations that emphasized equity
over equality and that rewarded the self over others, whereas for Hungarian participants system justification was associated
with more favorable views of work situations that emphasized equality over equity and that rewarded others over the self.
Results also revealed that Americans (but not Hungarians) who scored higher on system justification perceived as fairer that
which they perceived as more typical of their society. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that the psychological transfer
of legitimacy from socialism to capitalism in Hungary remains incomplete.

Social Dominance Orientation, one of the most popular individual differences measures in the study of generalized prejudice,
can be understood as having two components: Opposition to Equality (OEQ) and support for Group-Based Dominance (GBD). We consider
these components in terms of system justification theory and social identity theory. We find that each component best explains
different kinds of political views, consistent with the theory that they arise from different motivations. OEQ reflects system
justification motives. It better predicts attitudes towards redistributive social policy, political conservatism, and a lack
of humanitarian compassion for the disadvantaged. GBD reflects social identity motives. It is more associated with hostility
toward outgroups and concerns about intergroup competition. GBD and OEQ have different personality and demographic correlates,
exhibit distinctive relations with explicit and implicit attitudinal preferences, and differentially predict a variety of
policy attitudes. Use of GBD and OEQ as separate constructs enriches the understanding of prejudice, policy attitudes, and
political ideology.

To many commentators and social scientists, Americans’ stances on political issues are to an important extent driven by an
underlying conservative–liberal ideological dimension. Self-identification as conservative vs. liberal is regarded as a marker
of this dimension. However, past research has not thoroughly distinguished between ideological identity (a self-categorization)
and ideology (an integrated value system). This research evaluates the thesis that conservative–liberal identity functions
as a readiness to adopt beliefs and attitudes about newly politicized issues that one is told are consistent with the socially
prescribed meaning of conservatism–liberalism. In Study 1, conservative–liberal identity, measured in 2000, had an independent
prospective effect on support for invading Iraq in 2002 and support for the Iraq war in 2004, controlling for substantive
ideology, party identity, and demographics. In Study 2, conservative- and liberal-identifiers adopted stances on farm subsidy
policy based on randomly varied cues indicating which ideological group supports which stance. This cue-based influence was
mediated by adoption of attitude-supportive beliefs. Discussion addresses the joint impact of political discourse and identity-based
social influence on the organization of political attitudes.

Research on employer provided health insurance has shown that worker characteristics, wages and unionization influence the
prevalence of health insurance. Using the SIPP, this research confirms that these factors are also important in the construction
industry. However, in this volatile industry populated by small firms, the institution of collectively bargained multiemployer
health trust funds provides an additional impetus for the delivery of health insurance by exploiting cross-firm economies
of scale in the purchase of health insurance services and reducing the barriers to health insurance created by firm-labor
turnover through the creation of cross-employer portable health benefits that do not require multiple probation periods and
tolerate spells of unemployment. Additionally, while there is a countercyclical pattern of health coverage in the nonunion
sector associated with the shedding of marginal workers and contractors in the downturn, this countercyclical pattern is not
present in unionized construction. The greater insurance coverage of marginal unionized workers facilitated by multiemployer
trust-fund efficiencies means that the shedding of marginal workers in the downturn does not disproportionately shed workers
who are not covered by insurance.