CITIZENS CRIME STEREOTYPES, BIASED RECALL, AND PUNISHMENT PREFERENCESIN ABSTRACT CASES - THE EDUCATIVE ROLE OF INTERPERSONAL SOURCES

Although researchers have noted the importance of understanding how pe ople form punishment preferences about abstract criminal cases, few st udies have examined this issue. Using both experimental and survey dat a, two processes, reliance on an availability heuristic and reliance o n a crime stereotype, contributed to punishment preferences. The findi ngs suggest that the biased recall of severe crimes fuels demands for harsher punishment in opinion polls, and that unstable, uninformed opi nions partly produce the demands for harsher punishment. These studies also found that information about crime from interpersonal sources ca n change media driven, unrealistic crime stereotypes and substantially reduce the biased recall of atypical, severe crimes reported in the m ass media. Biased recall for more severe cases can be eliminated by in cluding concrete or contextually distinct details in crime stories tha t contain minor harm. These studies highlight the important role of co ntext in punishment preferences and the important role that interperso nal sources can play in educating the public about the nature of speci fic offenses.