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Support for the Death Penalty; Instrumental Response to Crime, or Symbolic Attitude?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Tom R. Tyler  and
Renee Weber
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Abstract

In this study the instrumental and symbolic perspectives on public support for the death penalty were directly compared within the context of a single survey of citizen attitudes. The results suggest that both instrumental and symbolic concerns influenced death penalty support. When the relative influence of the two factors was directly assessed, the symbolic perspective was found to exercise the major influence upon support for capital punishment, while the influence of instrumental crime-related concerns was small. These results suggest that death penalty support is one aspect of general political-social ideology, rather than a response to crime-related concerns or experiences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Psychology and Law , 1982 , pp. 21 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © 1982 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

*

This study was designed and conducted with the assistance of Robyn Diller, Lisa Hamilton, Joseph Kulba, Mary Polnow, Marcy Roe, Anne Stark, Evelyn Twine, and Bonnie Wolf. The authors would like to thank David Cordray, Shari Diamond, Phoebe Ellsworth, Lawrence Hughes, and Neil Vidmar for providing comments on drafts of this manuscript. Please address correspondence concerning this paper to Tom R. Tyler, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60201.

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