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Full-Text Articles in Criminology and Criminal Justice
The Fast & The Furious…Torturous?: Examining The Impact Of Torture Scenes In Popular Films On Public Perceptions Of Torture Policy, Erin M. Kearns, Casey Delehanty
The Fast & The Furious…Torturous?: Examining The Impact Of Torture Scenes In Popular Films On Public Perceptions Of Torture Policy, Erin M. Kearns, Casey Delehanty
Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications
Entertainment media regularly depict torture as effective. Indeed, most popular films contain torture—often outside of counterterrorism-specific plotlines. In the counterterrorism-specific context, watching a scene where torture works increases support for the practice. Yet counterterrorism-specific media is a niche genre, and we do not know if this holds for torture scenes more generally. We address this gap with a 4 (movie rating) x 3 (scene type) experiment with U.S. adults. While participants recognized that torture scenes are in fact torture, viewing these scenes did not impact support for the practice. Findings suggest that media’s influence on views about torture is more …
Intergroup Images Mediate The Relationships Between Government Abuse, Sociopolitical Orientations, And Political Action, Erin M. Kearns, Christopher Federico, Victor Asal, James Igoe Walsh, Allison E. Betus, Anthony F. Lemieux
Intergroup Images Mediate The Relationships Between Government Abuse, Sociopolitical Orientations, And Political Action, Erin M. Kearns, Christopher Federico, Victor Asal, James Igoe Walsh, Allison E. Betus, Anthony F. Lemieux
Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications
What factors impact how people mobilize against state human rights abuses? Drawing on Image Theory, we examine how perceptions of an out-group, government abuse, and sociopolitical orientations impact political action. Using an online survey-embedded experiment with a sample of 2,932 U.S. adults, we manipulated two factors: (1) the level of government abuse and (2) the risk of punishment for taking action against the state, while also including social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) as covariates. Participants indicated their propensity to engage in and justify both protest and violence. Participants rated the out-group as oppressive and evil. State abuse …