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Updated: Aug 29, 2026

An Experimental Paradigm for Measuring the Effects of Ageing on Sentence Processing
Published on: October 25, 2019
Effects of defendant age on severity of punishment for different crimes
Christine E Bergeron1, Stuart J McKelvie
1Department of Psychology, Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Québec, Canada.
Abstract:
After reading a murder or theft vignette in which the perpetrator was a 20-, 40-, or 60-year-old man, 95 undergraduates gave sentence and parole recommendations. Punishment was harsher for the murder than for the theft. For murder, participants treated the 20- and 60-year-old men less harshly than the 40-year-old man, which confirms previous archival findings. However, this inverted U-shaped function occurred for murder only. The authors discussed the results in the context of the just-desert and utilitarian rationales that guide sentencing and gave suggestions for future research.
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