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The Effects Of Individual Factors On Punitive Attitudes Toward Juvenile Offenders, Jennifer Keely Mac Connell

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between individual factors and punitive attitudes toward juvenile offenders. The individual factors examined were attributional style, authoritarianism, anxiety, self-esteem, the Five-Factor model of personality, and gender. It was hypothesized that possessing a punitive attributional style, maintaining authoritarian beliefs, and being male would predict punitive attitudes toward adolescent offenders. I also examined the effects of age of the offender and severity of the crime on attributions and punishment decisions. College students (N = 185) at a Midwestern university completed questionnaire packets in partial fulfillment of their introductory psychology course requirements. …