ISSN : 2093-3843
Identifiable victim effect refers to the tendency of greater sympathy and helping behavior to identifiable victims than to abstract, unidentifiable ones. This research tested whether this tendency also affects third-party’s punishment and compensation judgments in jury context for public’s legal judgments. In addition, through the Identifiable victim effect in such legal judgment, we intended to explain the effect of ‘the bill named for victim’, putting the victim's real name and identity at the forefront, which is aimed at strengthening the punishment of related crimes by gaining public attention and support. To do so, we conducted experiments with hypothetical traffic accident scenarios that controlled legal components while manipulating victim’s identifying information. In experiment 1, each participant read a scenario of an anonymous victim (unidentifiable condition) or a nonanonymous victim that included personal information such as name and age (identifiable condition) and made judgments on the degree of punishment and compensation. The results showed no effect of identifiability on third-party’s punishment and compensation judgments, but moderation effect of BJW was obtained in the identifiable condition. That is, those with higher BJW showed greater tendency of punishment and compensation for identifiable victims. In Experiment 2, we compared an anonymous victim (unidentifiable condition) against a well-conducted victim (positive condition) and ill-conducted victim (negative condition) to test the effects of victim’s characteristics on punishment for offender and compensation for victims. The results showed lower compensation for an ill-conducted victim than for an anonymous one. In addition, across all conditions except for negative condition, participants made punishment and compensation judgments higher than the average judicial precedents of 10-point presented in the rating scale. This research showed that victim’s characteristics other than legal components affects third-party’s legal decision making. Furthermore, we interpreted third-party’s tendency to impose higher punishment and compensation with effect of ‘the bill named for victim’ and proposed social and legal discussion for and future research.
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