The influence of dehumanization on the sentencing process and the sternness of punishment : Rape case

Details

Supervisors

Dumas, Rafaele

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques

Abstract

Dehumanization is a broad topic that we do not know under all its facets. Dehumanizing others is a psychological method as old as humanity. Humanity. This is precisely what we take away from them when we apply this process. Even though most studies have been done about dehumanization in general or about the animalistic dehumanization, we attempted to study both dehumanization – animalistic and mechanistic – through one single crime. Our main goal was to prove that dehumanization had an impact on the sternness of a punishment through different variables such as the controllability, responsibility, moral outrage or simply, the different sentencing motivations. We also tried to prove that the past of the criminal influences the perception people have about them as well as their likelihood to commit further offenses. Our results did not show any significant effect of dehumanization on any of our dependent variables. However, they highlighted some interesting conclusions that might lead to some further researches. One important finding is that what seems to influence the most the way people judge a criminal is their will to protect the society and themselves from victimization and, therefore, prevent further offenses.