Essentialist Bias in Culpability and Punishment Decision-Making about Criminals

Psychological essentialism refers to the belief that an underlying essence determines category membership and gives rise to individual features. The current project aims to examine the consequence of essentialist thinking in legal contexts. We found that essentialist thinking independently predicts culpability (β=.111, p=.014) and punishment decision (β=.131, p=.001).