The moderating role of the ethnic background of offenders in the relationship between political orientations and penal attitudes: An investigation in Türkiye

Abstract

We set out to investigate the moderating role of the ethnic background of offenders in the relationship between observers' political orientations (right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation) and sentencing goals through two studies involving a status-irrelevant crime (N = 408) and a blue-collar crime (N = 834) in an outside of WEIRD society, in Türkiye. Our results demonstrated that as RWA increases, restorative justice motives increase for a typical outgroup offender, whereas punitive reactions of hierarchy enhancers seem independent of the ethnic background of the offender. The results are discussed in line with outgroup leniency, ingroup favouritism, and the “black sheep” effect. The findings provide insights into the role of political attitudes in ingroup bias, which manifests itself differently in non-WEIRD societies.