People Endorse Harsher Policies in Principle Than in Practice: Asymmetric Beliefs About Which Errors to Prevent Versus Fix.
Psychol Sci
; 35(5): 529-542, 2024 May.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38593467
ABSTRACT
Countless policies are crafted with the intention of punishing all who do wrong or rewarding only those who do right. However, this requires accommodating certain mistakes some who do not deserve to be punished might be, and some who deserve to be rewarded might not be. Six preregistered experiments (N = 3,484 U.S. adults) reveal that people are more willing to accept this trade-off in principle, before errors occur, than in practice, after errors occur. The result is an asymmetry such that for punishments, people believe it is more important to prevent false negatives (e.g., criminals escaping justice) than to fix them, and more important to fix false positives (e.g., wrongful convictions) than to prevent them. For rewards, people believe it is more important to prevent false positives (e.g., welfare fraud) than to fix them and more important to fix false negatives (e.g., improperly denied benefits) than to prevent them.
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Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Castigo
Límite:
Adult
/
Female
/
Humans
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Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Psychol Sci
Asunto de la revista:
PSICOLOGIA
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
Pais de publicación:
Estados Unidos