College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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Item POWER AND STATUS IN JUDGING AND PUNISHING IMMORALITY(2018) Ho, Hsiang-Yuan; Lucas, Jeffrey W.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research offers a framework that explains how observers respond to moral violations when considering the amount of power and status held by violators. It follows the group processes literature on the characteristics of power and status. A proposed theory describes that prior to witnessing moral violations, observers develop moral expectations about potential violators on the basis of the levels of power and status attributed to the violators. When the moral violations occur, the moral expectations about the violators, as well as the resources available to the violators, in turn, affect the judgment and punishment decisions of the observers toward the violators. An online vignette study and a laboratory experiment test my predictions based on the proposed theory by varying the relative levels of perceived power and status between evaluation targets (i.e., violators) and evaluators (i.e., observers). Vignettes used in Study 1 described that observers had lower, equal, or higher power/status compared to violators in hypothetical scenarios. In Study 2, observers were assigned with either lower or higher power/status relative to violators in a group interaction setting in which the observers experienced differential risks of retaliation from the violators. Both studies assessed expectations of observers about the moral character of potential violators before exposing the observers to details of a moral violation committed by the designated violators. Punishment decisions of observers examined in Study 1 were attitudinal measures while those in Study 2 were based on behavioral reactions. Results indicate that prior to the immoral incident, observers developed lower moral expectations about violators with greater power and higher moral expectations about violators holding greater status. However, these expectations did not always translate into moral judgment and punishment. While viewing the violation as immoral regardless of power/status held by the violators, depending on the context, observers might or might not penalize the violators differentially across the power/status spectra. Fears of retaliation from violators who utilized resources attached to varied power and status positions did not affect how observers punished the violators. Therefore, results of the studies suggest a resilient power and status hierarchy despite the disruption of moral norms.Item On the Relationship Between Peers and Propensity: Examining Vulnerability to Peer Reinforcement(2011) Thomas, Kyle J.; McGloin, Jean; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Though scholars recognize that peer-based risks for offending are especially robust, a handful of researchers have started to question whether the vulnerability to these risks varies across people in theoretically meaningful ways. For instance, drawing on theory and empirical research, there is reason to suspect that individuals of high and low morality are not vulnerable to deviant peer reinforcement, whereas those who exist in the "middle ground" of morality are. In this way, there may be an inverted "U" of susceptibility to deviant peer socialization according to the level of subjects' propensity for offending. The current study investigates this hypothesis using longitudinal data from the National Youth Survey. Peer reinforcement does not significantly influence the offending behavior of the high morality individuals, and is a consistent and significant predictor for medium morality offenders. For low morality offenders, however, the results are inconsistent across the models. The theoretical and methodological implications for future research on the peer-propensity interaction are discussed.