2025/01/01 by Theresa Blanke, Mathias Twardawski · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
paper · pdf · doi:10.1525/collabra.146219
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/26
The identifiability effect describes humans’ tendency to respond differently to identified versus anonymous individuals. While this phenomenon has been extensively studied regarding the identifiability of victims, research on the effects of offender identifiability is relatively scarce and has found mixed results. Specifically, some studies show negative consequences of offender identifiability for offenders (e.g., stronger punishment); while others report positive consequences (e.g., weaker punishment). In this registered report, we investigated whether the effects of identifiability (vs. anonymity) of the offender on punishers vary depending on the punisher’s role in the initial offense. We predicted that offender identifiability leads to stronger punishment intentions among victims, but weaker punishment intentions among third parties. We manipulated offender identifiability (no vs. yes) and punisher role (victim vs. third party) in a between-subjects vignette experiment and measured participants’ punishment intentions, empathy, moral outrage, and blame attribution toward the offender. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence that the effect of offender identifiability depends on the punisher’s role. We found statistically significant but very small main effects of offender identifiability on punishment intentions and moral outrage, indicating reduced negative responses toward identified compared to unidentified offenders. Pre-registered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/7qzva (date of in-principle acceptance: 06/09/2024).