Out of sight out of mind: Psychological distance and opinion about the age of penal majority

The growth of urban violence in Brazil, as in other countries, has led citizens to demand more severe and punitive measures to solve the problem of juvenile crime. One motion submitted to the Brazilian parliament, for instance, proposes to reduce the age of penal majority (APM) from 18 to 16 years....

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Published inFrontiers in psychology Vol. 13; p. 763335
Main Authors Caldas, Ivete Furtado Ribeiro, Paim, Igor de Moraes, Leite, Karla Tereza Figueiredo, de Mello Junior, Harold Dias, Bataglia, Patrícia Unger Raphael, Martins, Raul Aragão, Pereira, Antonio
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Frontiers Media S.A 15.09.2022
Subjects
adolescence
moral development
psychological distance
Psychology
public opinion
youth justice
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Summary:The growth of urban violence in Brazil, as in other countries, has led citizens to demand more severe and punitive measures to solve the problem of juvenile crime. One motion submitted to the Brazilian parliament, for instance, proposes to reduce the age of penal majority (APM) from 18 to 16 years. Our hypothesis is that popular opinions about this proposal are largely constrained by construal levels and psychological distance. Accordingly, we expect that the knowledge and proximity to the circumstances associated with juvenile transgression will influence opinions about the proposal. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated how opinion against or for the proposal can be explained by psychological distance and moral development theory. We studied two samples, composed of people who do not have a deep experience with the subject (passersby in a public square ( N = 77) and workers from a juvenile justice court ( N = 157). After collecting socio-demographic information from the subjects and their answer to moral dilemmas, the data was subjected to a multivariate analysis by multimodal logistic regression for socio-demographic characteristics, Kohlberg moral stages, and opinion on the reduction of APM (agree, indifferent, and disagree) as dependent variables. Our findings suggest that 1) opinion about the APM depends on psychological distance and 2) socioeconomic variables may influence the average construal level of adolescent transgressors in the public’s perspective.
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Edited by: Baoshan Zhang, Shaanxi Normal University, China
This article was submitted to Personality and Social Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Reviewed by: Franca Crippa, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy; María José Vázquez Figueiredo, University of Vigo, Spain; Alexandre Martins Valença, Federal Fluminense University, Brazil
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.763335