Papers by Marshall Schmidt
Why Does Occupational Prestige Affect Sentencing Outcomes?: Exploring the Perceptual Mediators
Research on the effect of an offender's occupational prestige on criminal sentencing shows mi... more Research on the effect of an offender's occupational prestige on criminal sentencing shows mixed results, with some studies showing a positive association between prestige and sentence severity and others showing a negative association. We revisit this question using an online vignette experiment. Drawing on affect control theory and its computer program, <i>Interact</i>, we hypothesize that an offender's occupational prestige will increase the recommended sentence and that post-crime, or transient, impressions of the offender's potency will mediate this effect. We find support for both hypotheses: Occupational prestige increases the recommended sentence, and post-crime impressions of the offender's potency mediate this effect. The mediation is partial when potency is measured with semantic differentials, and it is complete when potency is measured with a set of explicit, denotative items. We also explore the mediational role of post-crime impressions of the offender's evaluation and activity. Although offender activity does not function as a mediator, offender evaluation plays a minor mediational role when offender potency is also controlled. We also find an interaction between post-crime offender evaluation and potency, with participants recommending a lighter sentence for offenders they see as both weak and evaluatively neutral. We discuss the empirical, theoretical, and methodological implications of these findings and outline avenues for future research.
Social Science Quarterly, 2019
Objective. Numerous studies show that political conservatives in the United States are more conce... more Objective. Numerous studies show that political conservatives in the United States are more concerned about crime than are political liberals. But, according to the "switch hypothesis," the direction of the association should reverse when the focus is on reducing and punishing white-collar crime. Despite the intuitiveness of this hypothesis, however, only one study to date has directly tested it. Method. We explore the hypothesis using data from an online survey administered to undergraduate, graduate, and law students at a southern university. We include a wide range of controls, including demographic attributes, socioeconomic indicators, street crime victimization, white-collar crime victimization, and a composite measure of trust in professionals. Results. As hypothesized, political conservatives are less concerned about reducing and punishing white-collar crime than are political liberals, and the association is stronger for men than it is for women, patterns that hold with and without the controls. The main effect of conservatism also holds (1) when examined with structural equation modeling, (2) when each item of the dependent variable is examined separately with stereotype logistic regression, and (3) when the sample is weighted to match the gender and race/ethnicity distribution in the population from which it was drawn. Conclusion. Consistent with the switch hypothesis, the results suggest that conservatives are less concerned about white-collar crime than are liberals. Numerous studies show an association between political ideology and concerns about crime, with conservatives expressing greater concern than liberals (e.g., Applegate et al., 2000; Pickett and Chiricos, 2012; Sargent, 2004; Unnever and Cullen, 2010). Yet, features of each political perspective suggest that the association should be reversed when the focus is on reducing and punishing white-collar crime. This "switch hypothesis," proposed decades ago by Zimring and Hawkins (1978), has been investigated only once (Unnever, Benson, and Cullen, 2008). Therefore, we revisit the hypothesis and go beyond the sole test of it by using a multi-item measure of white-collar crime concerns, a continuous measure of political ideology, a wider range of controls, and three different analysis strategies. We also explore gender as a moderator of political ideology. The Switch Hypothesis Several strands of political conservatism are associated with heightened concerns about crime: conservative moral values, concerns about collective security and cohesion, and
White-Collar Crime
Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict
Occupational Status, Impression Formation, and Criminal Sanctioning: A Vignette Experiment
Purpose We examine the effect of an offender’s occupational status on criminal sentencing recomme... more Purpose We examine the effect of an offender’s occupational status on criminal sentencing recommendations using a vignette experiment that crosses the offender’s occupational status (white-collar vs blue- or pink-collar) and the crime label, with one label (overcharging) associated with white-collar offenders and the other (robbery) associated with lower-status offenders. We expect negative and potent post-crime impressions of the offender and the crime to increase perceptions of criminality and, in turn, the recommended sentence. We term these negative and potent impressions “criminality scores.” Drawing on affect control theory (ACT) impression formation equations, we generate criminality scores for the offenders and the crimes in each condition and, using those scores as a guide, predict that white-collar offenders and offenders described as “robbing” will receive a higher recommended sentence. We also expect eight perceptual factors central to theories of judicial sentencing med...
Social Roles and Organizational Culture: Attributions of Responsibility and Punitiveness for Financial Crime
Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime
A white-collar offender’s role and the organizational culture in which the crime occurs affects s... more A white-collar offender’s role and the organizational culture in which the crime occurs affects subjective evaluations of offender culpability. However, how they affect responsibility attributions and punitiveness is unclear. We examine attribution processes by conducting a factorial experiment to test a proposed model. We test attribution theory derived predictions using innovative methods of scale creation and nonparametric analyses. Participants attribute more responsibility and are more punitive of individuals and offenders in organizational cultures where illegality is atypical. Our five proposed dimensions of responsibility are predictive of responsibility attributions, and path analysis shows offender role and offense environment affect how the five dimensions of responsibility affect attributions. Our findings have implications for criminal justice and adjudication processes and corporate regulation.
Social Roles and Organizational Culture: Attributions of Responsibility and Punitiveness for Financial Crime
Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime
A white-collar offender’s role and the organizational culture in which the crime occurs affects s... more A white-collar offender’s role and the organizational culture in which the crime occurs affects subjective evaluations of offender culpability. However, how they affect responsibility attributions and punitiveness is unclear. We examine attribution processes by conducting a factorial experiment to test a proposed model. We test attribution theory derived predictions using innovative methods of scale creation and nonparametric analyses. Participants attribute more responsibility and are more punitive of individuals and offenders in organizational cultures where illegality is atypical. Our five proposed dimensions of responsibility are predictive of responsibility attributions, and path analysis shows offender role and offense environment affect how the five dimensions of responsibility affect attributions. Our findings have implications for criminal justice and adjudication processes and corporate regulation.
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Papers by Marshall Schmidt