DO COPING STYLES INFLUENCE THE WAY WE JUDGE CRIMINAL OFFENSES - A PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION

A criminal offense might be viewed through the lens of the coping stra tegy adopted by its perpetrator To investigate this, we presented our participants with vignettes describing a high school student who has c ommitted an offense. We were able to demonstrate the moderating effect of depicted coping strategy on rated seriousness of offense. This dif ferential judgment war itself a function of the judge's own coping str ategy Our findings support a contextual or transactional approach to t he study of rated seriousness of offenses.