Developmental research on moral psychology has long been driven by the classic studies of Lawrence Kohlberg with an almost exclusive focus on reasoning. The adoption of an evolutionary perspective has opened moral psychology to investigations into the deep roots of morality. From this perspective, it is thought that group living (cooperation), evolved psychological mechanisms, disgust, emotion, and punishment make for the complex building blocks that is morality. Based on this notion, it is quite possible that morality is present early in life and driven by the forces of natural selection. Thus, moral development may be understood by taking a different approach, one that takes into account the tenants of evolution. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of third-party punishment on children’s moral sentiments using a common moral transgression (exclusion from a group). For this cross-sectional study, children in age groups 4-5, 7-8, and 12-13 years heard two short stories describing a perpetrator (matched in gender to the participant) who excludes a victim (also matched in gender to the participant). For each story, children were asked to imagine a different relationship to the victim: kin (i.e., brother or sister) or non-kin (i.e., friend/stranger). After each story, children were asked to rate the intensity of the moral transgression, choose a possible punishment for the perpetrator, identify an emotion associated with the transgression, and then offer a justification for the emotion. A total of 109 children were interviewed for the study. Results were mixed. Relationship (kin vs. non-kin) made a difference in some cases, while not in others. Overall, all children rated the treatment of the victim as wrong, deemed punishment as necessary, and reported neutral emotions. The children in the 12 to 13 age group were different on measures of wrongness and emotional responses. There is some evidence that relationship may influence moral sentiments, which is in line with an evolutionary hypothesis. Moral sentiments seem to be present early, and common moral transgressions are perceived as wrong early and consistently across age groups. This study provides some insight into the evolutionary roots of morality. Additional research is necessary to gain a greater understanding of other factors contributing to the evolutionary roots of morality. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Criminal justice administrators in the United States have been challenged by a highly visible accusation of racial discrimination. This perception has weakened the confidence in, and support of, our judicial process. This study attempted to clarify this perception by examining the effect of race on certain judicial decisions related to the death penalty. The variables chosen for analysis focused on the persons involved in the homicide, the circumstances of the crime, and decisions made during the processing of capital cases.

This study examined whether cultural factors could predict parents' attitudes toward the use of harsh physical punishment on their children in Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria. Presuming that most people disapprove of child abuse, different cultural groups may define the parental behaviors that constitute abuse differently, and such variances may result in a disparity of identification of parents from some cultures as more abusive than others. Four different independent cultural variables were measured: (a) conflict tactics, (b) nurturance, (c) drinking, and (d) valuing children. Form P, Part E of Dimension of Disciplinary Inventory (DDI) was used to measure parents' perception of physical punishment. Part C of Form P of DDI was used to measure Conflict tactics. Nurturance scale was used to measure the warmth patents display toward their children. Valuing Scale was used to measure the amount of value parents place on their children, while Heavy Drinking Scale measured parents' frequency of drinking. Random sampling approach was used to select 269 parents' who were administered the questionnaires. A multiple linear regression analysis was applied to examine the contributions of the independent variables with the dependent variable of parents' attitudes toward physical punishment of children The results of the multiple regression analysis showed that all 4 cultural variables predicted parental attitudes toward physical punishment. Results will provide greater understanding of the Nigerian attitudes toward physical punishment of children, and thus offer a foundation for future public education with the goal of reducing the use of physical punishment at the individual and community levels.

Wildlife managers have fed elk in North America for nearly 100 years. Giving winter feed to elk can compensate for a shortage of natural winter range and may boost elk populations while also helping prevent commingling with livestock and depredation of winter feed intended for livestock. In contrast to these benefits of supplemental feeding, there are economic and environmental costs associated with feeding, and elk herds that winter on feeding grounds have a higher risk of contracting and transmitting disease. Brucellosis is of primary concern now, and Chronic Wasting Disease may be in the future. Many see the discontinuation of winter-feeding programs as a necessary step for decreasing the risk of disease spread due to high animal densities associated with feeding during winter. My research evaluated the use of behavioral training to reduce reliance on supplemental winter feeding of elk, while minimizing population reductions and human-wildlife conflicts. My study was conducted at Deseret Land & Livestock (DLL) in Rich County, UT, where managers at DLL have over 20 years of data on elk feeding during winters of varying intensities. I tested the effectiveness of range improvements, strategic cattle grazing, dispersed supplemental feeding, hunting, and herding to distribute and hold elk in desired areas during winter. I compared elk numbers on the feed ground during this study with historic data on DLL, and also contrasted elk responses with other comparable feed sites in Wyoming that served as controls. In 2 mild winters we completely eliminated elk feeding without incident and were able to reduce the quantity and duration of feeding during 1 severe winter. Since the conclusion of my study, DLL has further reduced quantity and duration of feeding during severe winters, and has completely eliminated feeding in light winters. Based on a Before After Control Impact (BACI) analysis, the reduction in the proportion of the elk population fed at the study site was significantly less than the proportion of the elk populations fed at the control sites in Wyoming (P = 0.057). Based on these results, I anticipate wildlife managers can decrease dependence on costly supplemental winter feeding and reduce the risks of disease while keeping human-wildlife conflicts at a minimum. This research illustrates an adaptive method that can enable wildlife managers to keep elk populations in northern Utah at or near their current size, while constraining disease outbreak and transmission risks within "acceptable" levels.

Justice Thurgood Marshall proposed a three-pronged postulate in his dissent in1972 in the Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238) Supreme Court case. The American public is generally uninformed when it comes to the death penalty, and given information a "great mass of citizens" would be against it, unless their underlying beliefs were rootedin retribution (Furman v. Georgia, p. 363). These statements subsequently came to be known as the Marshall Hypothesis, and were deemed testable by researchers. This study examines the influence on death penalty opinion as a consequence of participating in a college class on the death penalty. Students in the class, who were either criminology majors or minors, were asked to take part in a questionnaire regarding their attitudes toward capital punishment at the beginning and at the end of the semester.Over the course of the class, students took part in a pre and post-test designed to measure their knowledge of the death penalty. This study correlated the amount of knowledge gained by each student with their respective death penalty attitudes. Results indicated that many in the class had little knowledge of the practice, application, and corollary effects of capital punishment. Those students who made the greatest amount of knowledge gains also reported a reduction in support for capital punishment. The acceptance of death penalty truths was not found to be related to a reduction in death penalty support. Further analysis, however, showed that those students who accepted these death penalty “truths” were also able to disregard death penalty “myths.” The present study concludes that support for the death penalty is directly reduced through increased knowledge gain, and indirectly reduced through truth acceptance as a function of death penalty “myth” abandonment.

This study focuses on the influence of mitigating circumstances on the sentencing outcome before and after the McKoy (1990) decision. In McKoy (1990) the Supreme Court decided that the jurors did not have to find mitigating circumstances unanimously. Results are reported based on a sample of North Carolina first-degree murder cases where the state sought the death penalty. Logistic regression is used to determine the importance of mitigating circumstances as predictors of jury decision-making in North Carolina, controlling for the variety of other factors that influence that decision. The descriptive statistics show that the average number of mitigating circumstances submitted and accepted had doubled in the post-McKoy cases. At the same time, the number of aggravating circumstances presented and submitted stayed about the same. The analysis then moved to the consideration of the impact of mitigating circumstances, and whether there had been a change between the two eras. Separate logistic regression analysis revealed that there had indeed been a shift in the effects of aggravation and mitigation, but no in the manner that might have been anticipated, Specifically, in the post-McKoy era, mitigating circumstances had a diminished impact on the probability of a death sentence while, conversely, aggravating circumstances carried an increased impact.

This study is an exploration and extension of previous research on the interactive effects of victim-race and victim-gender on death sentence outcomes. Williams and Holcomb's (2004) study suggests that an interactive effect exists between victim-race and victim-gender on Ohio death sentencing outcomes, such that killers of White women are especially singled out for capital punishment. The current study analyzes a sample of death eligible cases at the trial level in North Carolina to determine if Williams & Holcomb's findings hold up for a different sample of cases and in a different state. Logistic regression is used to determine if there are direct and/or interactive effects of victim's race and victim's gender on capital sentencing outcomes, controlling for the variety of other factors that influence that decision. Results suggest that the interactive effects reported by Williams and Holcomb do not exist in North Carolina at the sentencing/penalty processing phase of capital trials.

Optimal decision-making entails outcome evaluation, comparing received costs and benefits with predicted costs and benefits. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain area with major connections to the appetitive and aversive motivation systems, may provide the neural substrate of this evaluation process. One way to measure the relative contribution of these systems on decision-making is to measure individual differences in risk-taking behaviors. For individuals who make risky choices, this evaluation step may be biased: some show a preference for immediate, short-term rewards (increased appetitive system), while devaluing the long-term consequences of their choices (decreased aversive system). However, most studies supporting this theory have utilized monetary loss as the punishment. Other punishments that represent the presence of an aversive outcome, such as delivery of a painful stimulus, may be processed in a separate brain area and thus, may have differing effects on decision-making. The current study aimed to answer two main questions. First, we asked: is the ACC engaged by both appetitive stimuli and aversive stimuli? To answer this question, we recorded the Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) response, a component thought to represent activity of the ACC, during a passive reward and punishment prediction task. Results indicated that the FRN responded to whether the outcome was A) unexpected and B) delivered or withheld, but not to the valence of the outcome. Second, we asked: do individual differences in these two systems have a differential impact on decision-making? To answer this question, participants completed a gambling task where they had to choose between large and small bets based on a probability of winning while we recorded their FRN response. They also completed self-report questionnaires indicating their sensitivity to reward/punishment and risk-taking behaviors. Results indicated that increased sensitivity of the appetitive system and decreased sensitivity of the aversive system (measured by both self-report and ERPs) predicted risky choice on the self-report measure and less so on the behavioral measure. Taken together, these results complement those that suggest the ACC is involved in evaluating both costs and benefits and may be influenced by both appetitive and aversive motivational systems.

New Zealand prisons were a colonial construct established by early colonial administrations to deal with criminal behaviour occurring at the time of European settlement. Like the prison system, prison chaplaincy also had its origins in colonial experiences from the United Kingdom where chaplains were employed to meet the spiritual needs of those in institutions such as schools, hospitals, colleges, the military and legations. This thesis addressed the question of how the partnership between Church and State administrators in New Zealand for the provision of chaplaincy services developed between 1840 and 2006. Four phases were identified in the evolution of prison chaplaincy: phase one 1840-to-1950, characterised by ad hoc arrangements between clergy and local prison management; phase two 1951-to-1989 when Secretary for Justice Samuel Barnett established a formal relationship with the National Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church to provide chaplains for penal institutions; phase three identified as ‘prisons in change’ 1990-1999, when the Interim Chaplaincy Advisory Board and Prison Chaplaincy Advisory Board worked in tandem with the Departments of Justice and Corrections to administer the Prison Chaplaincy Service, arising from the recommendations of the Roper and Perry Reports; and phase four 2000-to-2006, a period when the Prison Chaplaincy Service of Aotearoa New Zealand was contracted to the Department of Corrections to employ prison chaplains. The research adopted a multi-faceted approach, consisting of phenomenology, ethno-methodology and hermeneutics to understand attitudes and experiences of key players and institutions in the evolution of Prison Chaplaincy. Data was collected through interviews of key informants, critical evaluation of published and unpublished material in public and private collections. The study identified six key factors that influenced the development of Prison Chaplaincy in New Zealand. These were: the nature of the Church-State interface, the impact of biculturalism, the influence of theological and ecclesiastical trends, and the impact of inter-church politics, the influence of socio economic trends and developments, and changes in Government policy. It also found that while there were tensions, the Church-State partnership had positive benefits for the spiritual outcomes for prisoners.

This thesis details a continuing body of research investigating the contribution of personality to disordered eating and alcohol abuse in young women. There is growing evidence of high levels of reward sensitivity in women with both disorders, and high levels of punishment sensitivity in dysfunctional eating women. However, it is unlikely that personality alone accounts for the development of such dysfunctional behaviour. Two studies were conducted to further examine the contribution of reward and punishment sensitivity to these disorders. In the first study, 443 university women completed self-report measures of alcohol use, dysfunctional eating, reinforcement sensitivity, parental drinking, family environment and maternal eating. Reward and punishment sensitivity were better predictors of disordered behaviour than family factors, although maternal dysfunctional eating significantly increased the risk of daughters' dysfunctional eating. Punishment sensitive daughters of bulimic mothers reported the highest level of bulimic symptoms themselves. Punishment sensitivity also functioned as a partial pathway variable between family risk and disordered eating. Given the stronger contribution of personality to disordered behaviour, a second study was conducted in which 131 women completed behavioural tasks under conditions of reward and punishment. Performance on a computerised measure of punishment sensitivity was associated with greater levels of dysfunctional eating but not drinking. However, performance on a card-sorting task of reward sensitivity failed to correlate with self-reported reward sensitivity or disordered behaviour. It was concluded that an innate sensitivity to reward increases the risk of disorders characterised by strong approach tendencies, whilst high punishment sensitivity, perhaps due to a chaotic family, increases the risk of dysfunctional eating, particularly daughters of eating disordered mothers.