Capital and punishment: Resource scarcity increases endorsement of the death penalty

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.08.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Faced with punishing severe offenders, why do some prefer imprisonment whereas others impose death? Previous research exploring death penalty attitudes has primarily focused on individual and cultural factors. Adopting a functional perspective, we propose that environmental features may also shape our punishment strategies. Individuals are attuned to the availability of resources within their environments. Due to heightened concerns with the costliness of repeated offending, we hypothesize that individuals tend towards elimination-focused punishments during times of perceived scarcity. Using global and United States data sets (studies 1 and 2), we find that indicators of resource scarcity predict the presence of capital punishment. In two experiments (studies 3 and 4), we find that activating concerns about scarcity causes people to increase their endorsement for capital punishment, and this effect is statistically mediated by a reduced willingness to risk repeated offenses. Perceived resource scarcity shapes our punishment preferences, with important policy implications.

Introduction

Throughout history and across societies, severe transgressors have often been punished with death. Researchers studying contemporary hunter-gatherer societies have consistently found a custom of killing group members for severe offenses, including malicious sorcery, murder, theft, cheating, and betraying the group to outsiders (Boehm, 2012; Otterbein, 1986). Despite strong historical roots, the use of capital punishment is now politically controversial in much of the world. One-hundred-forty nations have abolished capital punishment (Amnesty International, 2017), yet the death penalty is still employed in many countries, including in 31 of the 50 states within the United States (Death Penalty Information Center, 2017).

To explain divergent attitudes towards capital punishment, researchers have primarily examined proximate explanations. For example, some researchers find that support for the death penalty hinges on political ideology, with conservatism significantly predicting favorability towards the death penalty (e.g., Sarat, 2001). Related constructs, such as right-wing authoritarianism and individualist values, are also positively correlated with endorsement of the death penalty (Soss, Langbein, & Metelko, 2003). At the nation-level, capital punishment attitudes have been examined in relation to political stability (Miethe, Lu, & Deibert, 2005), tolerance for deviant behavior (Gelfand et al., 2011), fear of crime (Liang, Lu, Miethe, & Zhang, 2005), and social freedom (Neapolitan, 2001). However, little research has empirically examined capital punishment attitudes using an evolutionary lens. Exploring more ultimate explanations may therefore complement and deepen our understanding of why and under what circumstances people endorse the death penalty.

From an evolutionary perspective, there is ample evidence suggesting that evolved psychological mechanisms can have a robust influence on attitudes and preferences in a wide range of domains (e.g., Griskevicius, Delton, Robertson, & Tybur, 2011; Hill, Rodeheffer, Durante, Griskevicius, & White, 2012; Neuberg & Schaller, 2016; White, Kenrick, Neel, & Neuberg, 2013). Importantly, this literature demonstrates that our psychology, preferences, and attitudes are flexible in response to features of our environment, allowing for the adoption of ecologically functional strategies and behavior. Here, we adopt such a functional perspective, proposing that our punishment preferences should also be attuned to the environment—specifically, the perceived availability of resources.

Our human ancestors faced fluctuations in prosperity and resource availability (Chakravarthy & Booth, 2004; Griskevicius et al., 2013). Those better able to manage scarcity—by noticing its impending approach, and possessing better strategies for managing resources during difficult times—were more likely to survive and reproduce, leaving descendants with similar inclinations (White et al., 2013a). These evolved cognitive, affective, and behavioral strategies are likely to reside in the contemporary mind, becoming active in the presence of cues to scarcity (Griskevicius et al., 2011).

Indeed, perceptions of resource scarcity influence a range of behaviors. For example, Griskevicius et al. (2013) found that experimentally manipulating perceived resource scarcity affected individuals' financial decision-making. In a series of studies, the researchers demonstrated that cues to economic recession (as compared to a control condition) led participants with low socioeconomic status backgrounds to increase their temporal discounting and preference for risky rewards. Research has also discovered a robust relationship between resource availability and reproductive timing, with resource scarcity at both the individual and nation-level associated with earlier reproduction (e.g., Griskevicius et al., 2011). Lee and Zietsch (2011) found that priming resource scarcity in the lab shifted women's mate preferences, such that scarcity led women to favor traits indicating parental quality (e.g., ‘commitment’ and ‘nurturing’) rather than traits indicating genetic quality (e.g., ‘intelligence’ and ‘muscularity’). Beyond these effects, perceptions of scarcity have also influenced food choice (Laran & Salerno, 2013), categorization of racially ambiguous faces (Rodeheffer, Hill, & Lord, 2012), moral behavior (Sharma, Mazar, Alter, & Ariely, 2014), and attitudes towards economic redistribution (White et al., 2013a).

The logic underlying each of the findings above draws from the same premise: the availability of resources in one's environment affects the costs and benefits of adopting particular strategies. Inclinations and behaviors that enhance fitness in times of abundance may be maladaptive in times of scarcity, and vice versa. Our psychology has therefore evolved to flexibly—and functionally—respond to cues of resource availability.

Here, we propose that preferences for certain punishment strategies—specifically, capital punishment—also reflect sensitivity to resource availability. Punishing those who threaten group functioning is critical to successful human interdependence and cooperation (Boyd & Richerson, 2006; Neuberg & Cottrell, 2008). However, monitoring and punishing deviance is energetically costly. Resources spent monitoring and punishing transgressors within the group necessarily reduce the resources that can be spent on alternative tasks (e.g., acquiring food, shelter, and mates; protecting the group from outside threats). In addition, rehabilitating serious transgressors comes at some risk of failure.

On the other hand, the loss of a potentially useful group member through exile or death also carries costs—especially ancestrally, when humans lived in small, highly interdependent groups. This suggests that evaluating the opportunity costs associated with keeping severe transgressors in the group is inherently influenced by the severity of the threat posed by the transgressor; elimination-focused punishments should be reserved for wrongdoers who pose the most serious of threats. Supporting this notion is work by Boehm (2012), indicating that in forager groups, elimination-focused punishments are utilized when there is group agreement that certain individuals must be purged from the group, lest the survival of the entire group is threatened (see also Otterbein, 1986). Thus, when determining punishment of serious offenders, group members must weigh the relative costs and benefits of eliminating the threat against rehabilitating the transgressor.

This process reflects a functional error management system (Haselton & Nettle, 2006; Nesse, 2005), in which determinations are likely to favor the least costly error. In the cost-benefit analysis at hand, two possible errors can be made: individuals might (1) remove an offender who can be successfully reintegrated and offer valuable future contributions to the group, or (2) keep an offender within the group whose rehabilitation is unsuccessful and who imposes future costs on the group. We suggest that the availability of resources in one's environment affects the weighting of possible errors associated with expunging serious transgressors from the group. That is, which of these two errors is likely to be costlier depends in part on whether resources are abundant or scarce.

When resources are abundant, investing in the rehabilitation and reintegration of transgressors may prevent the loss of a potentially valuable group member at a relatively manageable cost to the group. Conversely, resource scarcity places the group in a precarious position, and the potential costs of keeping serious criminal offenders within the group may be prohibitively large. Given a bias towards making the less costly of possible errors (Haselton & Nettle, 2006; Nesse, 2005), people may favor harsher, elimination-focused punishments when resources are scarce. Consequently, we hypothesized that perceptions of resource scarcity increase favorability towards capital punishment.

We note here the underlying assumption of our approach: whatever the relative costs of keeping severe transgressors in the group versus permanent removal of these individuals, these costs are likely to be greater when resources are scarce as compared to when resources are abundant. Our purpose here is not to directly test the assumption that the cost of transgression is especially high under times of scarcity, but to explore its implications in the context of modern-day attitudes towards the death penalty. If, however, we are incorrect in our underlying assumption, the predicted effects should not manifest.

To test our general hypothesis, we adopted two complementary strategies. First, using archival data, we examined whether a real-world relationship exists between resource availability and death penalty usage (Studies 1 & 2). Second, we examined the causal connection between resources and death penalty beliefs at the individual level by experimentally manipulating perceived resource availability and measuring beliefs about the death penalty and our putative mediator (Studies 3 & 4).

Section snippets

Study 1

Study 1 investigated the relationship between resource scarcity and death penalty laws at the nation-level. As proxy for a country's level of resource availability, we obtained global data on human development in the 131 countries for which these measures were available. We also collected information about death penalty laws in each of these countries, creating a binary code indicating whether each country maintains capital punishment as a matter of law. We predicted that countries with lower

Study 2

In the United States, individual state legislation determines whether the death penalty is available as a possible punishment. As proxy for a state's level of resource availability, we obtained state per capita income data for each of the 50 states. We also collected information about death penalty laws in each of these states, again employing a binary code indicating whether the state maintains capital punishment as a matter of law. We predicted that states with lower per capita income would

Study 3

Studies 1 and 2 provide initial evidence supporting a relationship between resource availability and use of the death penalty; however, the correlational nature of archival data precludes causal interpretation of these results. Additionally, Studies 1 and 2 are focused on whether resource availability is related to the maintenance of death penalty laws and do not directly assess individual psychology. Thus, in Study 3, we experimentally manipulated perceived resource availability to test

Study 4

In Study 3, we found initial experimental evidence that perceived resource scarcity leads individuals to increase their favorability towards the death penalty. In Study 4, we test our proposed mediator, predicting that resource scarcity increases the perceived risks of keeping severe transgressors in the group, thereby increasing favorability towards elimination-focused punishments (such as the death penalty).

Although there is surface similarity between beliefs about the risks of keeping

Discussion

In a series of four studies, we find converging evidence supporting our hypothesis that perceived resource scarcity increases endorsement of the death penalty. Using archival measures of resource availability and death penalty statistics, we find that indicators of resource scarcity predict codification of capital punishment at the nation level and within the United States (Studies 1 & 2). Moreover, experimentally manipulating perceived resource availability shifts death penalty beliefs; when

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by research funds provided to Steven L. Neuberg by the Arizona State University Foundation for a New American University.

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

References (54)

  • D. Ariely

    Predictably irrational

    (2008)
  • C. Boehm

    Costs and benefits in hunter-gatherer punishment

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences

    (2012)
  • R. Boyd et al.

    Culture and the evolution of the human social instincts

    Roots of Human Sociality

    (2006)
  • M.V. Chakravarthy et al.

    Eating, exercise, and “thrifty” genotypes: Connecting the dots toward an evolutionary understanding of modern chronic diseases

    (2004)
  • CIA World Factbook

    The World Factbook: Population

  • CIA World Factbook (2017). The World Factbook: Distribution of Family Income - GINI Index. Retrieved...
  • M. Daly

    Killing the competition: Economic inequality and homicide

    (2016)
  • Death Penalty Information Center. State by State Database. Retrieved from...
  • Death Penalty Information Center

    State by state database

  • P.C. Ellsworth et al.

    Public opinion and capital punishment: A close examination of the views of abolitionists and retentionists

    Crime & Delinquency

    (1983)
  • Gallup State Ideology Survey (2012). State of the states. Retrieved from...
  • M.J. Gelfand et al.

    Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study

    Science

    (2011)
  • Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2008). The moral foundations questionnaire. Retrieved from...
  • V. Griskevicius et al.

    When the economy falters, do people spend or save? Responses to resource scarcity depend on childhood environments

    Psychological Science

    (2013)
  • V. Griskevicius et al.

    Environmental contingency in life history strategies: The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on reproductive timing

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (2011)
  • M.G. Haselton et al.

    The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases

    Personality and Social Psychology Review

    (2006)
  • S.E. Hill et al.

    Boosting beauty in an economic decline: Mating, spending, and the lipstick effect

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (2012)
  • Cited by (3)

    • The origins of criminal law

      2020, Nature Human Behaviour
    View full text