JUDGED PERSON DANGEROUSNESS AS WEIGHTED AVERAGING

This article reports two experiments requiring subjective evaluative j udgments of the potential dangerousness of hypothetical persons. The r esearch operationally fits the paradigm for the study of personality i mpression formation, and seeks to illuminate the processes by which tw o offenses combine to evoke a net judgment of dangerousness. The theor etical framework and philosophy adopted is Anderson's information inte gration and functional measurement theory. In Study 1, all paired comb inations of 10 distinctive crimes were each presented as having been c ommitted by the same person on two separate occasions. Subjects judged overall offender dangerousness. In Study 2, judgments of dangerousnes s were made when the time purportedly elapsing between two crimes was systematically varied over several ranges of up to 41 years. Three key findings emerged. First, judgments of dangerousness result from an av eraging process. This result yields paradoxical implications having co nsiderable pragmatic significance. Second, judgments of dangerousness following two sequential criminal acts (one of high and one of low ser iousness) are consistently higher when the high seriousness one is the second crime. Third, with certain qualifications discussed in the tex t, a serious earlier crime appears to elicit an approximately constant magnitude of judged present dangerousness no matter how long ago it w as perpetrated. This result implies that subjects infer considerable p ermanence of criminal predilection to those who have committed a serio us crime in the past.