Discerning Unfairness Where Others May Not: Low Self‐control and Unfair Sanction Perceptions

Abstract

Criminologists have long recognized that whether one perceives a sanction as fair or unfair influences the deterrent success of sanctions and the legitimacy afforded to legal authority. Unfortunately, although several scholars have claimed that individual characteristics influence how sanctions are interpreted, very little research has explored the individual factors that influence how one perceives sanctions to be fair/unfair. In this study, we take Gottfredson and Hirschi's notion of self‐control and use it to explain, in part, whether an individual perceives a sanction as fair/unfair. We also examine how sanction perceptions and low self‐control influence the perceived anger that may result from being singled out for sanctioning and whether self‐control conditions the relationship between perceptions and anger. Our results suggest that individuals with low self‐control are more likely to perceive sanctions as unfair, that unfair sanctions and low self‐control lead to perceived anger for being singled out for punishment and that self‐control conditions the effect of unfair sanction perceptions on perceived anger. Future directions are outlined.

Anticipated shaming and criminal offending

“…In particular, they highlight the degree to which formal theories of pure deterrence may have overstated the degree to which crime involves a cold calculation of economic costs and benefits. While debate continues about just what constitutes "rational" behavior, our results highlight the potential contribution of emotion to criminal behavior, and therefore echo the broader call of some sociologists (Massey, 2002) to incorporate emotion into the study of social behavior, and of some criminologists to incorporate emotion into the study of crime (Agnew, 1992;Sherman, 1993;Piquero, Gomez-Smith & Langton, 2004).…”

Selfishness as a Potential Cause of Crime - A Prison Experiment

“…They have for instance studied the effects of overconfidence (Dunning et al 1990;, hyperbolic discounting (Laibson 1997;Loughran et al 2012) and ambiguity aversion (Ellsberg 1961;Loughran et al 2011) on the decision to commit crime. This ties into older work on a self-serving bias in the estimated effect of sanctions (Nagin and Pogarsky 2003), the perceived fairness of sanctions (Piquero et al 2004), the motivating force of identity (Paternoster and Bushway 2008) and of morality (Paternoster and Simpson 1996;Brezina and Piquero 2007) and the ensuing disciplining effect of shaming (Rebellon et al 2010), as well as work on impulsivity Nagin and Pogarsky 2003), on the perception of the risk of sanctions (Paternoster et al 1983;Klepper and Nagin 1989;Nagin and Paternoster 1991) and on inter-individual differences (Nagin and Paternoster 1993;Nagin and Paternoster 1994;Piquero et al 2011;.…”

The effect of low self-control on perceived police legitimacy

“…Some scholars have used behavioral indicators of self-control (Holtfreter et al, 2008;McGloin, Pratt, & Maahs, 2004;Pratt, Turner, & Piquero, 2004), some have tested Hirschi's reconceptualization of self-control (Piquero & Bouffard, 2007;Higgins, Wolfe, & Marcum, 2008), and still others have used the more widely known Grasmick et al (1993) attitudinal self-control scale Gibbs, Giever, & Higgins, 2003;Higgins, 2007;Piquero et al, 2004;Kissner & Pyrooz, 2009;Unnever, Cullen, & Pratt, 2003). Regardless of its operationalization, however, self-control is routinely supported by the literature as a key predictor of crime (Pratt & Cullen, 2000;Tittle, Ward, & Grasmick, 2003).…”

“…In particular, the literature has provided little empirical attention to one of the most important predictors of law-breaking behavior-low self-control (Pratt & Cullen, 2000). This is an important gap in the process-based literature because self-control is also associated with people's attitudes and perceptions, such as definitions favorable to crime (Evans et al, 1997;Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990, p. 158) and negative views of the police (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990, p. 13;Piquero, Gomez-Smith, & Langton, 2004). What is more, the police generally deal with civilians that exhibit lower levels of selfcontrol than the larger population, which emphases the importance of understanding how individuals with this characteristic perceive the police (Beaver, DeLisi, Mears, & Stewart, 2009).…”