Punitiveness,Recall,and the Police

Abstract

Three groups of subjects of different social and educational backgrounds—first-year law students, police trainees in the first weeks of their course, and persons (mostly on relief) attending a settlement house—were pretested for punitiveness in a study of recall. The police trainees were found to be more rigid and far more punitive than the other groups. Within each group the mean recall for those subjects scoring above their group median for punitiveness was significantly better than the recall of those below their group median. Possible reasons for this result are discussed. Comparisons are made among control groups, groups subject to status-influence, those who were told they would be witnesses for the prosecution, those told they would be witnesses for the defense, and those told that the principal character had been in a mental institution. The recall scores of these subjects are discussed in relation to punitiveness and recall.