The influence of defendants’ feelings of guilt on their penalties: The mediating role of attribution processes

Abstract

The present study investigates the effect of defendants' feeling of guilt, during their trial as well as their interrogation, on their penalties. Results show that defendants who experience a guilty feeling are sentenced less severely than defendants who do not. Two cognitive processes mediate this effect: attribution of the offence to internal factors (referring to the defendant's personality) and attribution to external factors (referring to the situation). Results also emphasize the participants' difficulty in suppressing the information about the feeling of guilt and in controlling its effects on judgement. The implications are discussed. © 2011, Presses universitaires de Grenoble.SCOPUS: re.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe