Abstract
The amount of punishment prescribed for an offender by low, middle, or high authoritarians was examined in a sample of 198 subjects (135 undergraduate psychology students and 63 church members). Subjects completed a forced-choice form of the F scale and read a case history of a juvenile offender who was described as either a middle-class white, a middle-class black, a lower-class white, or a lower-class black. Subjects were asked to recommend an amount of punishment for the offender on a punishment scale. Consistent with previous research on authoritarianism, the high authoritarians recommended more punishment for the offender than the low authoritarians. However, high authoritarians prescribed more punishment for the middle-class rather than the lower-class offender, and did so regardless of offenders' race.
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