Investigating the relationship between justice-vengeance motivations and punitive sentencing recommendations

The present research investigated the relationship between underlying justice and vengeance motivations and sentencing recommendations made by expert clinicians, semi-experts, and lay-people. It was hypothesized that the semi-experts would recommend significantly different sentence lengths from those recommended by the expert and lay-person groups, in line with previous research findings. It was also hypothesized that justice and vengeance motivations would be related to punitive sentencing recommendations, and that these would not be the same across the three levels of expertise.