Study challenges assumptions about authoritarianism and punitiveness in criminal sentencing

A new study published in Political Psychology questions a long-standing belief in political psychology: that people with authoritarian tendencies are more likely to support harsh punishments for criminal offenders. Drawing on data from six European countries, researchers found that right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation—two traits commonly used to explain punitive attitudes—did not predict sentencing preferences in the way previous studies have suggested. Instead, punishment preferences were more diverse and complex, with patterns that contradict the dominant theories in the field.

For decades, researchers have explored why some people are more punitive than others. A popular explanation stems from political psychology and centers on two personality traits: right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.

Right-wing authoritarianism describes a personality profile defined by a strong preference for obedience to authority, adherence to traditional social norms, and a willingness to aggress against those who challenge them. It is typically measured using items related to submission, conventionalism, and aggression. People high in this trait are thought to value social cohesion and fear disruption to the social order.

Social dominance orientation, by contrast, reflects a preference for group-based hierarchies and inequality between social groups. People high in this trait tend to favor policies that maintain the dominance of their in-group over others and are often less concerned about fairness or the well-being of those considered “lower” in the social hierarchy.

Previous studies have found that both traits are associated with more punitive attitudes. People high in right-wing authoritarianism, in particular, have been found to support longer sentences, harsher penalties, and policies like the death penalty. These findings have supported theories suggesting that punitive attitudes are driven by either a desire for social order (in the case of authoritarianism) or a desire for group dominance (in the case of social dominance orientation).

However, many of these studies used general survey questions to measure punitiveness, such as whether “offenders should be punished more severely.” These kinds of questions may be too vague and too similar in wording to the items used to measure authoritarianism, making it hard to tell whether researchers are measuring two different traits or the same one twice. The current study sought to address these problems by using more concrete, specific measures of punitiveness.

To examine how people actually prefer to punish offenders, the researchers used data from the 2022 Central European Social Survey. Over 11,000 participants from Austria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia completed a questionnaire that included sentencing vignettes—short crime scenarios for which they chose appropriate penalties.

The vignettes described five offenses: assaulting a stranger, beating a romantic partner, rape of a stranger, rape of a partner, and evading child support. For each scenario, participants selected from a range of punishments, from no penalty to long prison terms. Unlike the abstract, single-item questions used in earlier research, these vignettes provided specific contexts and allowed for more nuanced responses.

The researchers used a statistical method called latent class analysis to group participants based on their sentencing choices. They found that people tended to fall into three broad categories: low, medium, and high punitiveness. However, this pattern did not support the idea that there is a single underlying punitiveness trait. Instead, different crimes produced different patterns of responses, and no single factor could explain all the variation in sentencing preferences.

The researchers then explored how right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation were related to these sentencing patterns. When they examined right-wing authoritarianism on its own, they found that it was sometimes associated with more severe sentencing, but not consistently. In fact, people with high authoritarianism scores were more likely to fall into either the low or high punishment groups, but not the middle group. This U-shaped relationship challenged the assumption that authoritarianism is always linked to harsher punishment.

When the researchers included social dominance orientation in their models, an even more surprising pattern emerged. Social dominance orientation was associated with lower levels of punitiveness. People high in this trait were more likely to recommend lenient punishments, especially for rape cases. This contradicts earlier research and theoretical models, which suggest that people high in social dominance orientation should support harsh penalties to maintain group hierarchies.

The researchers also broke down the authoritarianism scale into its three subcomponents: aggression, submission, and conventionalism. These subscales told very different stories. The aggression subscale, which includes support for punishing norm violators, was associated with greater punitiveness. Submission, however, was linked to more lenient sentencing. Conventionalism showed only weak and inconsistent associations. This finding casts doubt on the common practice of using the full authoritarianism scale as a single measure, since its subcomponents appear to influence punishment attitudes in opposite directions.

This study challenges the idea that punitive attitudes can be explained by a single personality profile. It also casts doubt on the usefulness of global survey questions for measuring punitiveness. People do not seem to have a fixed attitude toward punishment; rather, their responses vary depending on the crime and the context. Importantly, traits like authoritarianism and social dominance may interact in ways that obscure their individual effects. In fact, the study found that social dominance orientation suppressed the apparent influence of authoritarianism in some cases.

There are limitations to this work. The sentencing vignettes, while more concrete than global questions, still lacked detail that might have influenced responses, such as the age or background of the offender. The survey also included only five crimes, which may not capture the full range of situations in which people form punitive judgments. Cultural differences between the countries surveyed may also have affected how participants understood the questions or interpreted the scenarios.

Future research could improve on these methods by including a wider range of offenses, providing more detailed case descriptions, and examining how different kinds of information influence sentencing decisions. It would also be helpful to explore how people’s beliefs about the justice system, or their emotional responses to crimes, shape their punishment preferences.

The study, “The authoritarian personality model of punitiveness is inconsistent in predicting punishment preferences: A sentencing vignette study in a representative sample from six countries,” was authored by Andrzej Uhl, Malia M. Marks, and Paweł Ostaszewski.