judged person dangerousness as weighted averaging

Judged Person Dangerousness as Weighted Averaging1

EDMUND S. How2 Universiry of Missouri. St. Louis

This article reports two experiments requiring subjective evaluative judgments of the potential dangerousness of hypothetical persons. The research operationally fits the paradigm for the study of personality impression formation, and seeks to illuminate the processes by which two offenses combine to evoke a net judgment of dangerousness. The theoretical framework and philosophy adopted is Anderson’s information integration and functional measurement theory. In Study 1, all paired combinations of 10 distinctive crimes were each presented as having been committed by the same person on two separate occasions. Subjects judged overall offender dangerousness. In Study 2, judgments of dangerousness were made when the time purportedly elapsing between two crimes was systematically varied over several ranges of up to 41 years. Three key findings emerged. First, judgments of dangerousness result from an averaging process. This result yields paradoxical implications having considerable pragmatic significance. Second, judgments of dangerousness following two sequential criminal acts (one of high and one of low seriousness) are consistently higher when the high seriousness one is the second crime. Third, with certain qualifications discussed in the text, a serious earlier crime appears to elicit an approximately constant magnitude of judged present dangerousness no matter how long ago it was perpetrated. This result implies that subjects infer considerable permanence of criminal predilection to those who have committed a serious crime in the past.

Knowledge that an individual has committed some specified criminal or other social offense leads to numerous inferences about that person’s character and propensities. One type of inference, which is of concern in this paper, entails an attribution to the individual of some magnitude of dangerousness: his or her dispositional potential for harming others in a similar manner.

Inferences about the dangerousness of persons derive from some kind of subjective mental representation or private model of those who commit crimes.

‘The research was supported by a grant from the University of Missouri Weldon Spring Fund. I thank Chris Rupich for unerring execution of the data analyses, and Norman Anderson, Miles Patterson, and Brian Vandenberg for critically reading an earlier draft. The manuscript benefitted considerably from many constructive suggestions made by editorial reviewers.

2Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Edmund S. Howe, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Department of Psychology, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63 12 1-4499.

1270

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1994, 24, 14, pp. 1270-1290. Copyright 0 1994 by V. H. Winston 8 Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

DANGEROUSNESS AS WEIGHTED AVERAGING 1271

Such models generate information about the sorts of things to be anticipated from persons who have transgressed a law. Formal examples of models are in such constructs as criminal disposition (Carroll & Payne, 1977), defendant criminality (Tanford & Penrod, 1984), and dangerousness (e.g., Floud & Young, 1981; Hoffman, 1988; Morris & Miller, 1985).

Three key factors presumed to bear upon any assessment of dangerousness are: offense seriousness (Blumstein & Cohen, 1980; Wolfgang, Figlio, Tracy, & Singer, 1985), number of prior offenses, and time interval since or between crimes (Le., recency). Questions concerning them are predictably asked by justices prior to bailsetting, sentencing, parole and other decision points in the criminal justice system (Morris & Miller, 1987). They are moreover among the very first questions asked in informal, nonjudicial contexts in which others violate strong social/moral conventions and expectations.

This paper reports experiments dealing with subjective judgments of the degree to which a person who has committed two specified offenses on separate occasions is regarded as dangerous. The research is basically concerned with the information integration processes in evaluative judgment; in a problem space lying at an intersection between cognitive psychology, criminology, and the criminal justice system. The experiments reported here are thus directly concerned with an analytical inspection of some key determinants of subjective judgment.

It is true that several studies have demonstrated superior actuarial over interviewer (expert, clinical) predictions of dangerousness or of the risk of future dangerous crime (Carroll, Wiener, Coates, Galegher, & Alibrio, 1982; Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 1988). It is not, however, a goal of the present research to pit subjective judgment against actuarial prediction, or to argue against the validity of the latter. But it is the case that predictive judgments are sometimes based only on implicit, subjective criteria (Hoffman, 1988) because normative bases for more rigorous judgments have not been sufficiently generalized. The concept of dangerousness and its prediction have recently begun to come under somewhat closer formal scrutiny, however, partly as a result of such programs and policies as preventive detention which necessarily rely on a more explicit use of predictions of dangerousness (Morris & Miller, 1985, 1987).

On the other hand, questions about a person’s dangerousness in one or another respect may become highly pertinent also in numerous everyday social and certain family contexts. The implicit subjective predictions made in such situations are presumably based on multiple factors which include frequency and recency of social misdemeanors and other offenses varying in seriousness. Both quantitative and qualitative conditions must somehow combine by as yet unspecified integrative processes, and enter into ordinary judgments of

1272 EDMUND S. HOWE

dangerousness. A programmatic step toward identification of such integrative processes constitutes the target of this paper.

The present psychological studies are specifically designed to illuminate some of the integrative parameters and hence the contours of dangerousness judgments and the mental representations upon which such judgments may be based. Dangerousness judgments are not assumed to be exactly congruent with de facto, real-world dangerousness as perhaps shown in number and types of convictions. But it is nevertheless of considerable importance for us to attempt identification of those components of information that uninstructed laypersons may characteristically use in everyday predictions of dangerousness. Such determinants of course define the latent assumptions underlying a person’s judgment.

Concept of Dangerousness

Dangerousness is of course neither a psychological nor a psychiatric entity (Dershowitz, 1973; Goldstein & Katz, 1960; Kozol, Boucher, & Garofolo, 1972). It can not be assessed as a diagnostic enterprise (Mulvey & Lidz, 1985). Rather, it must properly be regarded (as it is here) as a continuum rather than as a categorical state with clear boundaries (Floud & Young, 1981). This is an important conceptual point because, as Menzies, Webster, and Sepejak (1 985) point out, “research has mirrored the arbitrary reality of dichotomous choice rendered by the clinicians” (p. 5 1).

The principle of repetition in particular is one of a few time-honored and trusted bases for prediction in psychology. It is certainly one component in the subjective as well as the actuarial probability that a particular person should be considered dangerous. Thus, Shah (1 978) noted that, “If a defendant had five or more arrests prior to the current arrest, the probability of subsequent arrest began to approach certainty” (p. 233). Hoffman (1988) reported that, “Prior conviction for the same charge”-an item leading the list of six items comprising the U.S. Parole Commission’s Salient Factor Score (Hoffman, 1984Fwas a key factor associated with the differences between high- and low-rate recidivists.

Another psychological aspect to the problem of operationalizing judgments of person dangerousness obliges us to try to identify what the rater is actually doing when he or she assigns a dangerousness scale value. Some light was shed on the matter by Howe (1988), who systematically showed that judgments of a hypothetical person’s dangerousness, made on the basis of just a single crime, are quite strongly correlated with absolutely independent judgments of crime seriousness ( r = .79); likelihood that the offender would inflict further harm/ injury on someone (r = .76); deserved punishment (r = .79); judged punishment given (r = .78); and moral wrongfulness (r = .77), all df = 25, p < .001. These


results confirm a substantial core of common evaluative meaning among these several dependent variables.

Dangerousness is close to what Funder (1 99 1) and others mean by a global trait. It appears to fit the Friendliness/Hostility factor (Dimension 11) of the five-factor model as described by Digman (1990) and others, at levels 3 (characteristics, scales) and 2 (act frequencies, dispositions). Moreover, since dangerousness is primarily an evaluative attribute, it may well be assumed to have as much cross-cultural generality as does Osgood’s primary evaluative factor (Osgood, May, & Miron, 1975).

Furthermore, in the framework of Rothbart and Park (1986) dangerousness, while not one of their target traits, is clearly closest in character to a subset of their traits for which: (a) Few occasions allow opportunities for confirming behaviors, and few occasions allow opportunities for disconfirming behaviors; (b) few instances are needed to confirm but many instances would be required to disconfirm the inferred disposition of dangerousness. In short, the de facto commission of a serious social/criminal offense is considered to be highly diagnostic of an inferable disposition of dangerousness. Herein resides, there- fore, a critically important component of the mental representation of dangerousness on the basis of a specific crime (Howe, 199 1 b).

The two experiments reported here required judgments of the dangerousness of hypothetical offenders on the basis of two crimes versus a single crime. The research fits the paradigm for the study of personality impression formation, and seeks to illuminate the processes by which two criminal offenses might combine to evoke a net judgment of dangerousness. The theoretical framework adopted is Anderson’s (1981, 1983, 1988, 1989) information integration and functional measurement theory. In Study 1, the 100 paired combinations of 10 distinctive crimes were each presented as having been committed by the same person on two separate occasions. Subjects judged overall offender dangerousness using a scale to be described. In Study 2, judgments of dangerousness were made when the time purportedly elapsing between two crimes was systematically varied over several ranges of up to 41 years.

University students served as subjects in both experiments. Some might argue that students are not appropriately representative, and that they are certainly not experts in dangerousness judgment. A good case can be made, however, for obtaining normative judgments of lay subjects in the present studies. Mulvey and Lidz (1985) and Monahan (1981) among others concluded that clinicians have been overrated as predictors of violence, especially with respect to the prospects for long-term future dangerousness. Others argue that “the peer public is better able to assess ‘reasonable fear’ or ‘justified public alarm’ than either judges or psychiatrists,” and that “juries might be assumed to have a better idea of the community standards which govern fear and the

1274 EDMUND s. HOWE

acceptability of risk” (Floud & Young, 1981, p. 25). As Funder (1991) noted, we regularly use implicit intuitive models of how certain traits are manifested in behavior; and the problem is thus to explicate the implicit. In the same spirit, Menzies et al. (1985) concluded that nonclinicians achieved a level of accuracy in the assessment of dangerousness at least equal to that of psychiatrists.

Most current research suggests, however, that the entire issue concerning the unrepresentativeness of students may have been overdrawn. Cutler, Penrod, & Dexter (1990) showed that undergraduate students are no less sensitive to eyewitness identification evidence than jurors; while Howe (1991b) and Howe and Loftus (1992) demonstrated highly commensurate individual and group processes of integration, by undergraduate students and circuit court judges, of information pertaining to intention, and mitigation, outcome severity.

Study 1

Method

Materials and Procedure

The basic set of 10 crimes appears in Table 1, along with single-crime dangerousness scale values obtained in the current study. The Pearson r between these values and the (9-point) seriousness scale judgments reported by Howe (1988) was .91,p < .01.

The 100 possible pairings of the crimes, along with the 10 single crimes, were presented in booklets to subjects. For the paired stimuli the two elements were labelled as First Offense and Second Offense. Subjects were asked to: (a) “Assume that each pair of offenses has been committed by someone on two separate occasions, and that just sentence was handed down and served for the first offense,” and (b) “Take each item in turn and consider just howpotentially dangerous you feel such an offender may now or in the foreseeable future be to others, in light of having already committed the two offenses”. For the single-crime stimuli subjects were asked to consider each simply as a first offence. The subjects were thus obliged to make judgments purely on the basis of dispositional factors to the exclusion of situational ones.

In the present experiments a global judgment of dangerousness (as defined in Method) was required of subjects. While it is quite true that one can abstractly separate severity of potential acts from likelihood of such acts, as noted above, the two components were highly correlated in recent systematic work (Howe, 1988). Hence the decision to use an unelaborated dimension of dangerousness was deliberate. The scale appearing beneath each item consisted of an ungraduated 5-in line defined as Offender dangerousness,


Table 1

The Set of10 Basic Crimes Used and Mean Judged Dangerousness Scale Values Obtained in Experiment 1

Crime Dangerousness

Rape 87.4 Murder, 1 st degree 89.0 Arson 65.0

Burglary 45.2 Vagrancy 33.8 Receiving stolen goods 25.5 Vandalism 21.4 Shoplifting 18.7 Disturbing the peace 17.9

Aggravated physical assault 53.5

annotated as “Extremely dangerous” at the right-hand end, and as “Not at all dangerous” at the other. Subjects registered each response with a pencil mark, its position later being measured to the nearest 1/20-in, thus creating a 100- point scale.

Experimental booklets. The 1 10 stimuli were prepared 5 per page in a single random sequence. The 22 pages were assembled in one of 22 completely counterbalanced sequences, and were completed by a total of 44 students for extra credit in an introductory psychology course at the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

Experimental Design and Statistical Analysis

The design of this experiment permitted inspection, within the framework of Anderson’s (1979, 1981) information integration theory, of the form of algebraic rule by which judgments of two crimes combine. First, and in accordance with the set-size effect, two identical crimes should yield a more extreme judgment than a single instance. Second, if we imagine the generic Crime 1 as represented horizontally and Crime 2 as the parameter, then the dangerousness curves could yield parallelism, suggesting that the two crimes combine either additively or by simple averaging. In this case there should be zero interaction between Crime 1 and Crime 2. On the other hand the dangerousness curves

1276 EDMUND S. HOWE

could yield a fan effect, implying a nonlinear relationship between Crime 1 and Crime 2; and in this event there would be a marked interaction between Crime 1 and Crime 2 effects. Third, the occurrence of a crossover effect in the curve defined by the plots for singlecrime conditions may be of critical value in ruling out a simple adding process even in the presence of statistical parallelism; and otherwise be in accordance with a weighted averaging process of information integration. Finally, an averaging process necessarily carries the paradoxical deductive implication that (in our context) a single serious crime may yield a more extreme judgment of dangerousness than the same crime paired with a less serious one.

Toward these ends a single repeated measures analysis of variance was performed on the entire, 10 (Crime 1) x 10 (Crime 2) x 44 (Subjects) = 4400, cell cube of judgments.

Results

Reliability of Judgments

For the 1 10 x 44 rectangle of data the population intraclass correlation, rkk, which indicates the probable correlation between the obtained averaged judgments and a hypothetical replication obtained under equivalent conditions, was .90 (Hays, 198 1, Formula 1 1 S.4). The fidelity of the input data is thus not an issue.

Mean Results

Appendix A presents mean dangerousness judgments for the 10 x 10 crime pairs. A representative display of the interrelationships among these mean dangerous judgments is provided in Figure 1. For illustrative clarity, Figures l a and lb each display the results for a representative half of the stimulus conditions.

The plots joined by broken lines define the dangerousness judgments for single crimes considered as single first offenses. Both figures embody a highly similar pattern of outcomes. In each case the five crimes on the horizontal axis have been spaced in proportion to the column totals in the basic factorial tables summarized in Appendix A.

The curves converge as Crime 1 becomes more serious. In other words the importance (weight) attached to Crime 1 varies with its seriousness value, and Crime 2 assumes greater importance when Crime 1 is of lower seriousness. The data thus display the averaging paradox. For example, in Figure l a compare the scale value for rape alone (right uppermost dashed plot) with the markedly lower lower scale values for rape plus the four less serious


Table 2

The Set of 10 Basic Crimes Used in Study 2, Partitioned Into High Versus Low Seriousness Subsets, and Mean Offender Dangerousness Scale Values Obtained for Single-Crime Conditions

Crime name Judged dangerousness scale value

High seriousness Aggravated physical assault Armed robbery Arson Child molestation Driving while intoxicated Kidnapping Manslaughter Murder, 2nd degree Rape Selling illegal drugs

Low seriousness Bootlegging Disturbing the peace Mailfraud Picking pockets Possession of illegal drugs Receiving stolen goods Shoplifting Simple assault Slander Vagrancy

53a 67 57 81 54 75 67 82 87 53

26 19 27 24 43 33 28 39 24 23

aEach entry = rounded mean of 25 (Subjects) x 5 (Inter-Crime Intervals) = 125 Observations.

second crimes (solid plots respectively for arson, burglary, receiving stolen goods, and shoplifting).

Analysis of Variance

The main effects for Crime 1 and Crime 2 were substantial, Fs(9, 387) 2

1278 EDMUND S. HOWE SECOND CRIME

A R a p

,,

FIRST CRIME

(a1

'w I SECOND CRIME

Figure I . Plots of mean judged dangerousness scale values as a function of one- and two-crime conditions in Study 1. Crimes 1 are spaced along the horizontal axis in proportion to their column totals in the factorial table. Figures l(a) and l(b) each contain data from a representative half of the 10 basic crimes (see text for further explanation).

100.00, MS, 5 47.17, p < .0001, respectively accounting for 20.9% and 28.8% of the total variance.

The Crime 1 x Crime 2 interaction yielded F(8 1,3483) = 6.0 1, MS, = 21.89, p < .0001. It remains highly significant using the Geisser Greenhouse procedure for conservative testing (Kirk, 1980). The interaction accounts for approximately 3.5% of the variance. Moreover, the linear component of this interaction was significant, F(9,72) = 101.00, MS, = 2 1 . 8 9 , ~ < .0001, and ex- plains 73.7% of the interaction variance. The strength of the linear component was undoubtedly reduced by the two deviant values obtained for vagrancy. In hindsight it appears that some subjects may not have understood this concept since they requested some clarification of its meaning following a reading of the instructions and a 2-min browse over a list of the basic pool of 10 crime stimuli.

The present findings are congruent with earlier ones by Leon, Oden, & Anderson (1973) which required evaluative judgment of groups of one, two and three different criminal persons identified with crime labels similar to


those used here. While their data likewise confirmed a weighted averaging process for a clear majority of subjects, some responded configurally and ignored the less serious crime.

Asymmetrical Order Effect

Judged dangerousness was higher across the board when the high seriousness crimes occurred as the second of two crimes, rather than as the first one. Evidence for that conclusion is as follows.

If one disregards for a moment the 10 paired crime items in which the same crime is repeated, there are 90 other paired items of which one subset of 45 functionally involve Crime A + Crime B conditions, and the other subset of 45 involve Crime B + Crime A conditions. The Pearson correlation, r, between the two subsets of dangerousness judgments was .98, df = 43,p < .OOO 1. However, this very high r belies an important asymmetry in the data. Appendix A reveals that asymmetry and Figure 1 embodies it. To wit, consider the four most serious crimes: murder-1, rape, arson, and aggravated physical assault. These four will now be collectively identified as high seriousness crimes, and the balance of six as low seriousness crimes. Judged dangerousness was higher when the four high seriousness crimes were presented as the second crime (along with a low seriousness first crime) than when they appeared as the first crime.

In 23 of the 24 relevant comparisons this low-to-high order yielded higher dangerousness judgments than did the high-to-low order. While the differences are small, ranging from 1.0 to 9.5 scale units, median = 3.9, the chance level for the 23/24 outcome is less than 1 in 8,000,000.

Study 2

The last observation led to the hypothesis that the modal subject in Study 1 adopted the following implicit assumption: That since each crime was stated as having been committed some “constant” period of time prior to Crime 2 and that “sentence was actually served for Crime 1 ,” then over time the hypothetical offender’s disposition toward serious crime may have diminished. Such attenuation would presumably be pronounced in the high-to-low condition, and appear to be confirmed by lower seriousness of the second crime.

Were the foregoing hypothesis correct, then it should be possible to ma- nipulate the magnitude of the order effect by varying the interval of time hypothetically separating Crime 1 and Crime 2. The order effect should be maximal for a long time interval of many years, and minimal for very short time intervals. In other words a divergent interaction between time interval and order would then be expected. Study 2 was designed to examine this analysis.

1280 EDMUND S. HOWE

Study 2

Method

Material and Procedure

Twenty basic crimes were used, 10 previously judged to be of relatively high and 10 of relatively low seriousness. The two subsets of crimes along with the empirical mean dangerousness judgments elicited in the present experiment are shown in Table 2. The general plan of the experiment was to present paired crimes (always one of high and one of low seriousness) as having been committed by the same person on two different occasions. The time interval allegedly separating specific Crimes 1 and 2 was defined as the “Time elapsing between the offender’s release from prison following completion of sentence for Crime 1, and hidher committing the second offense indicated; that is, the length of time for which the personal record was otherwise clear.” It is true that this definition leaves unspecified the length of time between commission of Crime 1 and completion of sentence for Crime 1, and hence confounds it with the seriousness of Crime 1. However, this confounding is of no consequence for evaluation of the effects of intercrime interval on the within-crime pair basis to be adopted here. All subjects made judgments along the same type of dangerousness scale as described for Study 1.

Each subject judged 40 paired items, each containing a different time interval separating the two crimes. Ten of the items consisted of a random pairing of a high seriousness (Crime 1) with a low seriousness (Crime 2) component. A further 10 items entailed a repairing of the high seriousness crime with a different low seriousness one. Thus, 20 of the judged items involved a high-to-low seriousness ordering. The balance of 20 items entailed a reversal of each within-pair order to that of low-to-high seriousness.

Time intervals between Crimes 1 and 2. Four different ranges of intercrime intervals were used, of which two (a and b, below) linearly fitted natural arithmetical scales of time, and two (c and d, below) fitted logarithmic time scales. The four time interval ranges, each of which was used with five of the high-to-low and with the five complementary low-to-high paired items, were as follows. Range a was 1, 7, 13, 19, and 25 years; Range b was 4, 10, 16,22, and 28 years; Range c included 6 hr, 23 days, 34 weeks, 89 months, and 6 years 10 months; and Range d was 36 hr, 15 days, 5 months, 4 years 1 month, and 41 years.

In the general case each subject judged, for example, high-to-low crime pairs 15 (Table 3 below) with time intervals Range a such that, for each subject, each of those five pairs was presented with a different one of the five intervals.


High-to-low crime pairs 610 were then judged with time intervals Range b. Items 1 1 15 involved a repairing of items 15, presented with time intervals Range c; and items 1620 similarly contained a repairing of items 610, and used Range d. The other 20 items-embodying a reversal of order (i.e., all low-to- high)-were presented to subjects with exactly the same time intervals as used for the high-to-low order. Each subject thus made judgments of 40 pairs. In addition, every subject judged the dangerousness implied by each single crime, considered as a solitary first offense.

Experimental booklets. The 40 items in a basic random order were typed 5 per page. The pages were then assembled in each of eight sequences. Five different sets of booklets as just described were prepared such that the five different time periods within each of the time interval conditions (ad above) could be administered to five independent groups of subjects.

Design and statistical analysis. A separate mixed analysis of variance was run for each of the 20 basic paired crimes so as to permit evaluation on a within-crime basis. The between-subjects influence was intercrime interval and the within-subjects effects was for order. Each analysis thus entailed 5 (Independent) x 2 (Repeated) x 25 (Subjects) conditions. Were the hypothesis concerning the subjects’ implicit assumption correct, then at a minimum we should expect to find systematic effects of the time interval variable for the high-to-low, but not for the low-to-high conditions, and consequently an interaction between order and interval. But were the hypothesis wrong, then we may expect to find a main effect of order, but absolutely no intercrime interval or interaction effect.

The dependent variable in each case was the position of the response on the scale of dangerousness again measured to the nearest 1/20 in. The 125 new subjects were drawn from the same resource pool described for Study 1 .

Results and Discussion of Study 2

Reliability Estimates

The value of rkk was computed for each independent group of 25 subjects. Values ranged from .93 to .95, median rkk = .94, allp’s < .0001.

Analysis of Variance of Order and Time Interval

Table 3 lists the paired crime stimuli, and the overall mean dangerousness values obtained for the high-to-low order and for the low-to-high order. The low-to-high order consistently yielded larger mean dangerousness scale values than the high-to-low order the differences ranging from 3.1 to 25.3 scale points and the median being 12.9/100 points.

1282 EDMUND S. HOWE

A conservative criterion ofp < .01 was set for evaluation of all F ratios. This decision simplifies presentation and discussion of the results but does not significantly alter the overall interpretation.

The order effect was highly significant in 19/20 cases, all Fs ( 1 , 120) I 7.2 1, p 2 .01. (The exception was DWI, for which F = 2.47, p I .OS.)These results confirm that the low-to-high order elicited more extreme dangerousness judgments than did the high-to-low order. The proportions of variance accounted for by the 19 order effect ranged from 2.8% to 25.0%, with a median of 7.5%. Thus, the seriousness of the most recent offense is highly pertinent to the judgment of dangerousness, as has been urged in criminological circles for some time.

The within-pair interval effect was not significant for 16 of the 20 crime pairs, all Fs(4, 120) I 2.14, all p > . lo, and 8 Fs were 1.0. Four crimes pairs (see items #16-19 in Table 3) yielded a small marginally significant interval main effect: for rape, kidnapping, arson, and manslaughter, all Fs(4, 120) 2 4 . 1 0 , ~ < .01. These four items were judged in the time interval scale conditions of 36 hr, 15 days, 5 months, 4 years 1 month, and 41 years. However, the effect of time interval was negligible in the repaired presentations of the same four high seriousness crimes, which repairings incorporated time intervals of 4, 10, 16, 22, and 28 years (pairs 69 in Table 3), all Fs(4, 120) I 1 . 7 3 , ~ > . lo. From this standpoint the significant time interval effects actually observed in these four cases could be due largely to the inclusion of the 41 years category per se, rather than to the particular high seriousness crimes per se.

The solitary Order x Interval interaction effect in the entire experiment was for rape, F(4, 120) = 3.74, p < .01, while the other 19 interaction terms uniformly yielded, Fs 5 3 . 2 5 , ~ > .O 1 ; and for 13 of them, Fs < 1 .O. In the former regard there was a markedly sharper drop in judged dangerousness between 4 years and 41 years for the high-low order as compared with the low-high order. The foregoing results concerning rape, kidnapping, arson, and manslaughter are embodied in Figure 2.

It is likely that subjects in the 41 years condition evinced an intercrime interval effect because such a long period implies that the target stimulus person would now be 60 or more years old. Such an implication may include attributions of diminished vitality and hence of actual dangerousness. In this regard the nationwide proportion of first-time and recidivist inmates aged 55 or more is only between 1% and 2% (Beck, 1987; Greenfield, 1985).

Evidence for Averaging

It is not possible to make a systematic formal test for averaging in the


Table 3

Values of Judged Dangerousness for Pairs of Crimes Occurring in the High-Low Order and the Low-High Order (Columns I and 2). Arithmetical Differences Appear in Column 3. Crime Pairs are Identified in the High-to-Low Dangerousness Sequence (Experiment 2)

Crime order

Crime paira High-low Low-high

1. Child molestation + mail-fraud 2. Murder (2nd degree) + possession of illegal

3. Driving while intoxicated + shoplifting 4. Aggravated physical assault + receiving stolen

5. Armed robbery + vagrancy 6. Rape + disturbing the peace 7. Kidnapping + picking pockets 8. Arson + simple assault 9. Manslaughter + bootlegging

10. Selling illegal drugs + slander 1 1. Child molestation + possession of illegal drugs 12. Murder (2nd degree) + shoplifting 13. Driving while intoxicated + receiving stolen

14. Aggravated physical assault + vagrancy 15. Armed robbery + disturbing the peace 16. Rape + picking pockets 17. Kidnapping + simple assault 18. Arson + bootlegging 19. Manslaughter + slander 20. Selling illegal drugs + mailfraud

drugs

goods

goods

51

65 32

37 45 50 46 43 46 33 72 68

44 42 54 61 64 47 50 40

69

78 38

47 61 75 68 58 59 42 79 80

47 52 66 78 71 59 69 48

Note. aPairs 1-5 presented with time intervals Range a, pairs 6-10 with Range b, pairs 11-15 with Range c, and pairs 16-20 with Range d. All values are rounded to the nearest integerI100.

1284 EDMUND S. HOWE

_ _

cn 80 - c 70 -

60 -

50-

0 4 0 -

3 0 -

20 -

cn a3

cn = a3

m e

s

loo 90 T

Low-High: Others

I L I I I I

36 hours 15 days 5 months 4 years 41 years

Intercrime Time Interval (log,, months)

Figure 2. Plots of mean judged dangerousness values for the four crime pairs yielding a significant main effect of time between release from prison and execution of a second crime. Rape is shown in solid lines. Means of values for kidnapping, arson, and manslaughter (identified as others) are shown in dashed lines. Judgments for low-high pairs versus high-low seriousness pairs define the parameter. Points along the abscissa are plotted in equal logio days units.

present case because each serious crime was paired only with two low seriousness crimes, and such pairings were unique. Indirect but clear evidence that an averaging process did nevertheless occur was derived as follows. For an averaging hypothesis to be tenable the dangerousness values for double crime stimulus conditions must be straddled by those for the two single crime conditions, which they are except for the borderline case of arson. The chance probability of 9/10 such outcomes is .002. Pertinent dangerousness values in each case may be recovered from Tables 2 and 3. For example, child molestation was given a dangerousness judgment of 8 1 .O (Table 2) when considered as a single first crime. The mean of the two conditions under which child molestation was judged as the second of two crimes was 73.5 (Table 3). This value is higher than the mean of 61.5 for two conditions under which child


90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

- - - - - - - - -

€ L A L A I

High-only Lolw-only High-only Low-only

Figure 3. Grand means for the high-only, low-high, high-low, and low-only conditions, averaged over all relevant crime conditions. The vertical bars show the range of values for individual crime stimuli. The grand mean plots for high-only and low-only conditions are each based upon 125 x 10 = 1250 observations. The low-high and high-low plots are each based upon 125 x 2 x 10 = 2500 observations.

molestation was judged as the first of two crimes (Table 2). A value of 35.0 marks the mean of the two low seriousness crimes (elsewhere paired with child molestation) considered as single first crimes.

Supplementary graphic evidence that the data thus accord with the neces- sary requirements of an averaging process of information integration is presented in Figure 3. The four plots appearing in the figure are the grand means obtained by summing over all relevant crime conditions. The relative magni- tudes of these four values, which are extremely stable since they are based on either 1250 or 2500 observations (figure caption), are inconsistent with a simple averaging model.

Discussion and Implications

These experiments have produced three key findings. First, Study 1 clearly indicated that judgments of dangerousness result from a weighted averaging

1286 EDMUND S. HOWE

process. The data derived in Study 2 also imply some form of averaging, but the design does not permit exact specification. The two sets of results collectively carry the implication that two crimes, which differ in seriousness may evoke weaker evaluative judgments than a single serious crime. The phenomenon occurs precisely because the process of integration entails an averaging rather than a cumulative additive computation. On the basis of considerable basic research using the personality impression formation paradigm (Ander- son, 1965, 1981, 1989; Leon, Oden, & Anderson, 1973), one may anticipate considerable generality of the weighted averaging result from studies in which the hypothetical past record contains more than two crime convictions having varied amounts of similarity to each other. Meantime, those making judgments of dangerousness on the basis of the personal record should be aware of the averaging paradox because it is nontrivial, very predictable, and beyond the rater’s awareness.

The results carry implications for such disciplinary problems as the setting of bail and parole. For example, Ebbesen and Konecni (1975) studied the amount of bail that was set by court judges for hypothetical cases in which three variables were orthogonally controlled: prior record and local ties of the defendant, and the D. A.’s recommendations concerning amount of bail. The data accorded with an unweighted averaging model, and lend some eco- logical validity to the general theme of the present article (Levin, Louviere, Schepanski, & Norman, 1983).

The occurrence of an averaging process moreover is actually discrepant from real-world evidence cited in the introduction (Hoffman, 1984, 1988; Morris & Miller, 1985, 1987; Shah, 1978) to the effect that the number of prior offenses is one predictor of future offenses. The frequently-observed predilection toward averaging could well turn out, however, to be one of the causes of dismally poor predictions of dangerousness and recidivism yielded by the interview as compared with numerous variants of the actuarial method (Carroll et al., 1982; Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 1988).

Further, both experiments provided convincing evidence that judgments of dangerousness following two different criminal acts are without exception higher when the high seriousness crime is the second one. The effect of crime order observed across the board here is not really a recency effect because there were but two crime items in each case. Thus, the “order” outcomes could in principle be ascribed either to the low seriousness component (which would diminish the scale values) or to the high seriousness one (which would increase the dangerousness scale values). Those making judgments of dangerousness on the basis of the personal record should be aware of this phenomenon.

Finally, the second study provided no convincing general evidence that


judgments of person dangerousness are either progressively or at all sub- stantially diluted by time elapsing since the perpetration of a serious prior crime. To this extent subjects evidently attach considerable stability to inferred criminal dangerousness, implicating it as a disposition presumed not to markedly diminish with the mere passage of time. This implication merits serious attention. The results in this regard define a critical component of subjective mental representation of criminal dangerousness, and hence of the public perception of the dangerousness of criminal persons. This public perception of course may or may not eventually be found congruent with behavioral observations or with the prevailing perceptions of dangerousness presently held at executive policy levels within the criminal justice system. But it must be acknowledged.

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