To punish or repair? Evolutionary psychology and lay intuitions about modern criminal justice.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Petersen MB
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3569042 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
To punish or repair? Evolutionary psychology and lay intuitions about modern criminal justice.
Petersen Michael Bang MB Sell Aaron A Tooby John J Cosmides Leda L
Evolution and human behavior : official journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society 20121101 6
We propose that intuitions about modern mass-level criminal justice emerge from evolved mechanisms designed to operate in ancestral small-scale societies. By hypothesis, individuals confronted with a crime compute two distinct psychological magnitudes: one that reflects the crime's seriousness and another that reflects the criminal's long-term value as an associate. These magnitudes are computed based on different sets of cues and are fed into motivational mechanisms regulating different aspects ...[more]
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