The Relationship Between Judgments of Evil and Punishment Judgments

What consequences result from judging a given act (or its perpetrator) as evil? Because evil actions represent the worst possible forms of immorality, and that on some conceptions evil people are irredeemable, it stands to reason that judgments of evil would predict severe punishments. However, surprisingly little is known about precisely how judgments of evil relate to judgments of punishment. We theorized that judgments of evilness should add unique predictive value beyond comparable, and more widely studied, measures of wrongness, blame, and moral character. In a preregistered study, participants (N = 238) made moral judgments and punishment recommendations in response to a comprehensive range of wrongs (e.g., theft, battery, manslaughter, murder). Results revealed three general findings. First, judgments of evil uniquely predicted punishment recommendations beyond related moral judgments (e.g., wrongness, blame, moral character). Second, judgments of evil uniquely predicted death penalty endorsement and judgments of an offender's potential rehabilitation, whereas other moral judgments did not always do so. Finally, death penalty endorsement and rehabilitation judgments were better associated with person judgments than with act judgments, whereas more general punishment judgments showed no such divergence. These findings illuminate the predictive power of judgments of evil with regard to punishment judgments.