Personality and Individual Differences 66 (2014) 48–53

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Personality and Individual Differences

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Individual differences underlying attitudes to the death penalty

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.03.0050191-8869/� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 0115 846 6627.E-mail addresses: sunny_kandola@hotmail.co.uk (S.S. Kandola), vincent.egan@

nottingham.ac.uk (V. Egan).

Sunpreet Singh Kandola a, Vincent Egan b,⇑a Department of Psychology, University of Leicester, 106 New Walk, Leicester LE1 7EA, UKb Centre for Family and Forensic Psychology, University of Nottingham, Yang Fujia Building, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 19 November 2013Received in revised form 3 March 2014Accepted 6 March 2014Available online 4 April 2014

Keywords:PersonalityDeath penaltyMoralitySocial dominanceRight-wing authoritarianism

a b s t r a c t

There are strongly-held arguments regarding attitudes to the death penalty on both sides of the debate.The current study examines how underlying individual differences in personality, expressed morality,prior victimhood, attitudes to abortion, and gender predict attitudes to the death penalty. An online ques-tionnaire design was used, comprising a measure of personality (the IPIP-50), a measure of socio-moralattitudes, a measure assessing attitudes to abortion, and as an outcome, the death penalty attitude scale.High Extraversion and Conscientiousness, low Openness and Emotional Stability, and lower pro-abortionattitudes all significantly predicted support for the use of the death penalty. In a multivariate analysis allconstructs bar Emotional Stability remained independent predictors of support for the death penalty.Males were more in support of the death penalty and more retributive and revenge-orientated in theirrationale for such support. These findings reinforce previous research surrounding individual influenceson attitudes to the death penalty and indicate personality factors shaping right-wing authoritarianism askey influences on the construct, rather than a priori higher level measures of morality, gender orvictimhood.

� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Individual differences in attitudes to the death penalty

The severity of punishment for a given criminal act is some-times justified by the claim such punishment acts as a deterrentto further crime, and this is particularly the case for nations thatuse the death penalty (Becker, 2006). Opponents of the death pen-alty point out that there is no evidence for the alleged deterrent ef-fect, and that to take the life of a person who breaks a moralboundary by killing is itself immoral (Donohue & Wolfers, 2006).Some individuals support the reintroduction or application of thedeath penalty in countries where it has been withdrawn. Thisstudy examines how general personality traits, gender, self-re-ported morality (both to, being a victim of crime and attitudes to-ward abortion (itself a form of State-sanctioned killing to some)influence views toward the death penalty.

McKelvie and Daoussis (1982), and McKelvie (1983) foundextraverts supported the death penalty more than introverts. HighExtraversion, along with low Openness and low Emotional Stabilityhave been previously and significantly related to authoritarianism,which was itself marked by a greater willingness to deliverharsh punishments (Colemont, Hiel, & Cornelis, 2011). Capital

punishment is supported more by authoritarian individuals(Feather & Souter, 2002), and also favoured by persons with greaternumbers of attributes associated with borderline personalitydisorder (Watson, Ross, & Morris, 2003). Using the five factormodel of personality, Robbers (2006) found that high levels ofExtraversion, Conscientiousness and low Openness predictedpro-death penalty attitudes, whereas low Agreeableness scorespredicted attitudes opposing the death penalty. Higher Extraver-sion and Conscientiousness traits may be lead to being pro-deathpenalty due to such persons characteristically favouring an overtlysocial, orderly, and conventional society (Roberts, Jackson, Fayard,Edmonds, & Meints, 2009).

Gender strongly influence on attitudes to the death penalty; ameta-analysis of 23 studies by Lester (1998) found males more in-clined to pro-death penalty attitudes than females. It is possiblethat gender effects are more complex than these simple associa-tions imply, as gender shows an interaction with personality traits,with females being higher in extraversion, agreeableness and neu-roticism than males (Schmitt, Realo, Voracek, & Allik, 2008). Malessupport the death penalty for reasons of retribution and revengerather than deterrence (Vidmar, 1974), and this could also reflectissues of social dominance, males preferring a sense of hierarchalcontrol (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994).

Morality is a multifaceted phenomenon which governs an indi-vidual’s perceptions of behaviour perceived to be right or wrong,

S.S. Kandola, V. Egan / Personality and Individual Differences 66 (2014) 48–53 49

and encompasses views about truth, affiliation, life, law, and legaljustice (Gibbs, Widaman, & Colby, 1982; Rest, Edwards, & Thoma,1997). Killing another person is an inherently immoral act,whether done by an individual or a group (though societies may at-tempt to morally-diffuse responsibility for the act by defining theact a State-sanctioned penalty). However, society is made up ofindividuals, who, in aggregate, influence societal decisions; more-over these individuals are active in campaigning for or againsthow we chose to enforce or laws. It is therefore it is important toexamine the relationship between morality, individual differences,and public attitudes.

Morality research has sometimes used dilemmas (e.g., the run-away trolley paradigm; Nichols & Mallon, 2006) to operationalizethe construct. One difficulty with such dilemmas is that they arehypothetical, and therefore subject to the argument they moremeasure self-projection than moral reasoning (Klein, 2011).Kohlberg (1984) proposed that there are four moral orientationstypically adopted by individuals; normative orientation (followingduties and rights, due to rules); fairness orientation (emphasisingjustice and equality); utilitarianism orientation (emphasising wel-fare and happiness for self and others); and perfectionism orienta-tion (good conscience and autonomy). These orientations havebeen argued to represent progressively higher modes of moral rea-soning (Vries & Walker, 1986). Kohlberg and Elfenbein (1981)found persons with a higher moral reasoning level showed greateropposition toward capital punishment. This finding may poten-tially be mediated through higher moral reasoning being a productof greater abstract thinking surrounding human rights, and the dig-nity of human beings. If this is true, Openness (which correlateswith IQ) should be higher in persons opposing the death penalty.

Internal moral views validate the death penalty as right orwrong depending on individual cognitions. Over 11 studies, O’Neil,Patry, and Penrod (2004) found individuals with favourable atti-tudes toward the death penalty had an increased willingness toconvict in capital jury trials. Their results were explained usingthe biased assimilation theory (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979), where-by individual characteristics and beliefs influence processing ofexternal information. Other research conducted by Johnson andTamney (1988) has shown the existence of moral plasticity, sug-gesting morality has a fluid structure, applied differently depend-ing on the ethical dilemma present. This is exemplified by theoften paradoxical attitudes to abortion; persons who are pro-abor-tion (‘pro-choice’) are often opposed to the death penalty, whereaspersons opposed to abortion are often pro-death penalty. Claggettand Shafer (1991) examined this discontinuity in attitudes to lifeand found similar results, indicating attitudes to abortion may alsohelp predict support for the death penalty.

A final area potentially informing the genesis of attitudes to thedeath penalty is being a victim of crime. Tseloni and Zarafonitou(2008) found victimisation led to an increase in fear of crime,and fear of crime leads to a greater willingness to endorse thedeath penalty (Keil & Vito, 1991). Findings regarding the influenceof being a victim on punishment vary; while Dull and Wint (1997)found victims and non-victims showed no difference in their atti-tudes toward the death penalty, Klama and Egan (2011) found thatthe combination of fear of crime and greater Conscientiousnesspredicted greater punitiveness.

Previous research has typically examined the link between indi-vidual factors and death penalty attitudes on a construct-by-con-struct basis, however these constructs are rarely discrete; it iscrucial within research to understand how these variables interact,and the example of attitudes to a complex social phenomena suchas the death penalty is a strong test of such conjunctions. Thisstudy will attempt to understand the extent to which personality,attitudes to abortion, morality, and being a victim of crime (or not)explains attitudes to the death penalty in a multifactorial model.

These findings from previous studies lead the following predic-tions to be made, all of which suggest an individual differences ap-proach can help understand the basis of attitudes to the deathpenalty. We predict: high levels of Extraversion and Conscientious-ness alongside low Emotional Stability and Openness will predictpro-death penalty views; males will be more pro-death penaltyorientated than females; males will show more retributive motivesfor the use of the death penalty; being a victim of crime will beassociated to death penalty support, and support for abortion willpredict lower support for the death penalty. As an individual’smorality upholds their view of the death penalty and this is typi-cally reciprocal to their attitudes to abortion, we predict that theimportance of morality to predict support (or rejection) of thedeath penalty argument will be less important than the dispositionof the person making the decision.

2. Methods and procedure

2.1. Participants

An on-line Internet survey recruited a cohort of 222 partici-pants, of whom 15 were excluded (see below); this left 207 partic-ipants with useable data (M:F = 68:139). Participants were agedbetween 18 and 71 (Mean = 30.12 years, standard deviation(SD) = 11.30). All were recruited by a hyperlink to an online surveythrough social networking sites such as Facebook or other onlinesurvey portal websites. The cohort comprised 151 participantsfrom death penalty-abolished countries, and 56 from death pen-alty-practicing countries (136 (66%) from the United Kingdom, 52(25%) from the USA, and the remaining 19 (9%) from Spain, NewZealand, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, India, Australia, SouthAfrica, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore). Of the cohort, 11 par-ticipants were aged below 18, so could not provide informed con-sent; these responses were removed from the data set. A further 4participants were removed as they failed to complete all scales.

2.2. Design

The study was approved by the University ethics committee. Aquestionnaire was produced using Google Docs and hosted on theInternet. The study sought to predict attitudes toward the deathpenalty via scores on standardised questionnaires and demo-graphic information. All participants completed the same ques-tionnaires, which assessed attitudes to the death penalty andabortion, morality, victim of crime status, and personality.

2.3. Materials

All participants were provided an informed consent form andwere initially given details of participation, their duties, their rightto withdraw, and the anonymity of their data. The following ques-tionnaires were used.

2.3.1. The International Personality Item Pool 50 (IPIP-50: Goldberg,1992)

The IPIP-50 was used to measure the Big Five dimensions ofpersonality, i.e., Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,Openness and Emotional Stability. Participants scored items on a5-item Likert scale ranging from ‘nothing like me’ to ‘very muchlike me’, 1–5, respectively. The individual subscales held consistentinternal reliability and validity (Smith & Snell, 1996); Extraversion(0.83), Agreeableness (0.87), Conscientiousness (0.83), EmotionalStability (0.78) and Openness (0.83).

Table 1Summary means, standard deviations and internal consistency scores (n = 207).

Mean SD Reliability

Extraversion 30.6 9.2 0.91Agreeableness 40.1 6.4 0.83Conscientiousness 35.6 7.2 0.82Openness 39.2 5.8 0.79Emotional Instability 29.3 9.2 0.90Socio Morality 26.7 6.5 0.60Abortion support 25.1 6.8 0.92Death penalty total 11.2 5.0 0.91Death penalty (retributive reasoning) 9.5 3.7 0.72

50 S.S. Kandola, V. Egan / Personality and Individual Differences 66 (2014) 48–53

2.3.2. Socio-moral reflection scale (Gibbs et al., 1982)A group of 11 moral questions was used to assess level of moral-

ity. The responses were recorded using a five point rating scaleranging from ‘not important’ to ‘very important’. Level of moralitywas kept as a continuous measure, and not labelled moral or im-moral; instead individuals were labelled either higher or lower intheir moral scores. The reason for this was to highlight measuringmorality in a non-absolute way, potentially fluctuating in relationto the specific context. The scale has previously shown inter-raterreliability between 0.83 and 0.92, and an internal consistency coef-ficient of 0.76 (Nilsson, Crafoord, Hedengren, & Ekehammar, 1991).

2.3.3. Abortion attitudes scale (Stets & Leik, 1993)The abortion attitudes scale comprises 25 items, with the re-

sponses scored on a 5-item scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’to ‘strongly agree’ (1–5, respectively). This scale reflects dimen-sions of availability and general support; moral acceptability; sta-tus of fetus; hard reasons/control; and women’s autonomy. Thescale has an internal consistency coefficient of 0.85 (Patel & Myeni,2008).

2.3.4. Attitudes toward the death penalty scale (O’Neil et al., 2004)This scale comprised 19 items, again scored on a 5-point rating

scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ (1–5,respectively). The scale has 6 subscales; general support; retribu-tion and revenge; deterrent; mandatory death; ‘‘cheaper option’’;and parole. General support for the death penalty has previouslyshowed an internal consistency coefficient of 0.87, whereas theretribution and reasoning sub-scale was 0.75 (O’Neil et al., 2004).

Demographic information (age, gender, prior victimisation) wasalso collected.

A debrief was provided on the end page of the survey, withinformation regarding arguments on both sides of the death pen-alty debate, and action points for participants possibly distressedby the nature of the study.

2.4. Procedure

Participants were provided with a hyperlink which directedthem to the online questionnaire. They were then shown the firstpage, which provided informed consent information. Informedconsent was provided by the participant once they clicked ‘con-tinue’. Ethical guidelines set by the British Psychological Societywere respected, and a statement displaying that the participantpossesses the right to withdraw throughout the study was pro-vided. All participants completed the scales in the same order;demographic information, the Socio-moral reflection scale, theIPIP-50, the death penalty attitudes scale, and finally the abortionattitudes scale. The participant was then directed to a full debriefof the study.

2.5. Data analyses

All scales were tested to check assumptions of normality, line-arity, reliability, multicollinearity and homoscedasticity beforebeing treated as interval data. As most of our hypotheses weredirectional, all statistical analyses were tested with one-tailed lev-els of significance (unless otherwise stated), with the initial alphaset at .05. Summary internal reliability and mean scores were cal-culated for all measures. The measures were then tested usingbivariate and multivariate analyses. Measures were coded andscored according to the rules set by the devisors of the instru-ments. Participants were assigned to one of two groups, dependingon whether they resided in a country which practiced death pen-alty, or from a country which did not. Gender was likewise dichot-omous coded (0 for female, 1 for male).

3. Results

Normality of the data was assessed, and results showed a nor-mal distribution. Homoscedasticity was maintained, residual plotsbeing evenly scattered. All scales were found reliable (Table 1). Nomulticollinearity existed between variables, as the Variation Infla-tion Factor (VIF) remained below 4 for each predictor variable.Therefore no violations of data assumptions were found. Means,standard deviations, and internal consistency scores for the mea-sured variables are presented in Table 1. All measures bar socio-morality were acceptable. Overall group means were presentedin Table 1.

Gross effects of gender and victimhood were tested (Table 2).Males scored significantly higher than females for support of thedeath penalty, and retributive reasoning underlying this decision.There were no significant differences between victims and non-victims of crime for attitudes endorsing the death penalty andretributive reasoning.

A correlational analysis was conducted to examine the univari-ate relationships between these variables (Table 3). Higher Extra-version was positively correlated with death penalty support andretributive reasoning underlying support for the death penalty.Higher Agreeableness negatively correlated with declared socio-morality. Higher Conscientiousness negatively correlated with so-cio-morality and positively correlated with death penalty support.Higher Openness positively correlated with abortion support, andnegatively correlated with death penalty support and retributivereasoning. Higher Emotional Instability was negatively correlatedwith support for abortion, and positively correlated with deathpenalty support and retributive reasoning. Higher declared socio-morality positively correlated with support for abortion and nega-tively correlated with support for the death penalty and retributivereasoning. Gender (dichotomous coded) negatively correlated withabortion support, and positively correlated with retributivereasoning.

As there has been previous research indicating interactioneffects between personality and gender, regression interactioneffects were examined. To test this, the personality traits werecentralised, an interaction term was produced, and finally a regres-sion analysis conducted. This yielded non-significant results, indi-cating no interaction effect between personality and gender forgeneral support for the death penalty. As no assumptions were vio-lated, a stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted,entering the nine predictor variables to identify those variableswhich specifically predicted death penalty support without theirassociation being confounded by their concurrent association withthe other measures (Table 4). The model explained 19% of the totalvariance (R = .47, R2 = .19, F(9,197) = 6.38, p < .001). Personality, inthe form of higher Extraversion (t = 3.11, p = .002), Conscientious-ness (t = 2.44, p = .016) and lower Openness (t = �2.86, p = .005)significantly predicted support for the death penalty, as did oppos-ing abortion (t = �3.11, p = .002). Variables that had no significantcontribution to the overall outcome were Emotional Instability,

Table 2Comparison of gender and victim of crime status for attitudes to the death penalty (n = 207).

Male Female t (205) P<Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

GenderSupport for the death penalty 59.27 (8.89) 57.01 (7.05) 1.61 .05Death penalty (retributive reasoning) 10.55 (3.88) 8.92 (3.41) 3.19 .01

Victim of crime No YesSupport for the death penalty 58.59 (7.21) 56.31 (8.47) 1.20 n.s.Death penalty (retributive reasoning) 8.55 (3.56) 9.98 (3.60) 1.10 n.s.

n.s. = Non-significant.

Table 3Correlation matrix (Pearson’s r) between measured variables (n = 207).

Abortion support Socio Morality Support for the death penalty Death penalty (retributive reasoning)

Extraversion �.08 �.03 .25** .16*

Agreeableness �.01 �.13* �.01 �.06Conscientiousness �.01 �.13* .23** .08Openness .18** �.04 �.20** �.23**

Emotional Instability �.14* �.09 .20** .15*

Socio Morality .22** �.17** �.13*

Gender �.13* .04 .11 .21**

Abortion support .22** �.30** �.34**

* P < .05.** P < .01 (one-tailed).

Table 4Multiple regression analysis of variable scores predicting support for the deathpenalty (n = 207).

B SE Standardised b P<

Extraversion .12 .04 .21 <.01Agreeableness �.05 .05 �.07 n.s.Conscientiousness .11 .05 .16 <.05Openness �.16 .06 �.19 <.01Emotional Instability .04 .04 .07 n.s.Socio Morality �.09 .05 �.11 n.s.Gender .11 .72 .01 n.s.Abortion support �.15 .05 �.21 <.01Victim of crime �.29 .66 �.03 n.s.

n.s. = Non-significant.

S.S. Kandola, V. Egan / Personality and Individual Differences 66 (2014) 48–53 51

Agreeableness, gender, prior victimhood, and overall socio-morality.

4. Discussion

The present study investigated whether expressed morality,attitudes regarding abortion, personality, gender, and being a vic-tim of crime influenced attitudes to the death penalty. Univariateanalyses found Conscientiousness, Extraversion and EmotionalInstability significantly and positively related to support for thedeath penalty, whereas Openness was negatively correlated withsupport for the death penalty. The effect sizes for these relation-ships were small but systematic, though did not take into accounttheir correlation with themselves. Males and females significantlydiffered in their attitudes to the death penalty; males were moresympathetic, supporting the gender-based hypothesis. Genderwas also significantly positively associated with retributive reason-ing as a motive for death penalty use; males were significantlymore retribution and revenge orientated compared to females,supporting another of our hypotheses. Self-reported morality wassignificantly correlated with support for abortion, but significantlynegatively associated with support for the death penalty. A key fo-cus of this study was to assess whether these effects were upheld

when a multifactorial model was used to predict attitudes to thedeath penalty.

Multiple regression was used to rationalise these associations,and found an individual’s level of morality showed but a trend tosignificantly predicting attitudes to the death penalty when otherconstructs were considered. However, lower support for abortionsignificantly predicted higher death penalty support, reiteratingthe idea of paradoxical moral plasticity. Higher Extraversion, high-er Conscientiousness and lower Openness were likewise significantpredictors of the death penalty, however, having being a victim ofcrime did not significantly predict death penalty support.

The results of this study uphold the findings of Robbers (2006),Roberts et al. (2009), and McKelvie and Daoussis (1982) in showingthe involvement of personality traits on attitudes to the death pen-alty. Why might this be? Extroversion is defined by outgoing socia-bility; Conscientiousness is a trait which revolves aroundpurposeful and dutiful action; and Openness has at it’s core quali-ties such as flexibility and curiosity (and thus, reciprocally, lowOpenness involves being inflexible and un-enquiring). Social con-formity is shaped by gregariousness, a lack of psychological mind-edness (correlated with lower Openness; Beitel & Cecero, 2003)and rule-oriented thinking in persons who prefer an orderly,well-functioning society (Roberts et al., 2009). The conjunction ofhigh Extraversion and Conscientiousness, and low Opennessunderlies right-wing authoritarianism (Ekehammar, Akrami, Gylje,& Zakrisson, 2004), and it is thus no surprise that these drove sup-port for the death penalty. We found general sociomoral attitudes,gender and being a victim irrelevant to the association. Also nota-ble by their absence were two constructs central to antisocialbehaviour; Agreeableness and Emotional Stability (low Neuroti-cism; Egan & Lewis, 2011). The cognitions behind sympathy (oropposition to) the death penalty therefore reflect more generalright-wing social values rather than those involving individualinstability or general animosity. This suggests making moralisticor pathological attributions to proponents on either side of the de-bate is both rhetorically and objectively wrong.

Gender was an influential variable differentiating death penaltysupport, with males significantly more in support of the deathpenalty than females (Lester, 1998; Stack, 2000). These gender

52 S.S. Kandola, V. Egan / Personality and Individual Differences 66 (2014) 48–53

differences may exist due to males being more socially conserva-tive than females, social conservatism being characterised byupholding beliefs protecting traditions and morals surroundingpunishment (Cook, 1998). As has been previously observed, maleswere also more retributive and revenge-orientated compared to fe-males. This result may be explained by social dominance theory; asa group, males have more affinity for hierarchal control as an ele-ment of their social dominance orientation, whereas females aremore egalitarian-oriented (Pratto et al., 1994). This inclination isinclined to emphasise superiority to out-groups, and may be seenin tough-minded conventional views regarding attitudes to crimi-nals. Pratto et al. (1994) also found a strong correlation betweensocial dominance orientation and death penalty support.

Morality had a significant negative association with death pen-alty support, reinforcing how confused and inconsistent moraljudgements can be regarding attitudes to the death penalty(Conway & Gawronski, 2012). Generally, the level of morality anindividual possesses influences their views on ethically sensitivetopics. In our study we found self-reported morality was lessimportant than personality for predciting support for the deathpenalty. We speculate that this may be because morality is a com-plex and multidimensional concept, and the socio-moral scale(which had a reliability of just 0.60 in our study) only capturedone aspect of the construct: social moral reasoning.

Our research upholds the concept of moral plasticity; there wasa correlation of �.30 between supporting abortion and supportingthe death penalty, so anti-abortion attitudes were correspondinglya significant predictor of pro-death penalty attitudes. Claggett andShafer (1991) account for these inconsistent views by suggestingmoral orientations govern beliefs, so individuals with highermorality support taking a person’s life for guilty actions and hei-nous crimes, but do not condone the taking of an innocent orunconscious life.

This study had a number of limitations: social morality is onlyone dimension in the overall construct, and a more diverse scalewith greater construct validity may show more nuanced results.Our measure of morality was more unreliable than seen in previ-ous research. We did not measure education (although higherOpenness may have functioned as a proxy), nor explicit social con-servatism. Personal views can influence capital jury trials throughthe phenomenon of biased assimilation, where external case factsare interpreted in line with personal beliefs (Lord et al., 1979). Ourresults suggest that the source of these personal views lies more inpersonality, which outperforms lay constructs such as gender orvictimhood, both more commonly thought to underlie right-wingauthoritarian values.

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