Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-65f69f4695-s2gkq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-28T13:29:19.521Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

23 - Moral Judgments about Retributive Vigilantism

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2025

By
Corey H. Allen ,
Thomas Nadelhoffer ,
Jason Shepard  and
Eyal Aharoni
Edited by
Kevin Tobia
Kevin Tobia
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

Given how common portrayals of vigilantism are in history books, literature, cinema, television, and the popular press, it is surprising how little we know about the public’s attitudes and beliefs about the phenomena. While there is a fair amount of research by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists on various forms of vigilantism, only a limited number of psychological studies have explored people’s moral judgments about vigilantism in a controlled and systematic way. Our goal was to build upon the work that has been done by probing people’s moral, legal, and political judgments about what we call “retributive vigilantism” – that is, vigilante acts that are intended to give the deserved suffering to those who have harmed other people.

Keywords

vigilantismextralegal punishmentmoral permissibilityretributivismmiscarriage of justicepolicecriminal justice

Information

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence , pp. 381 - 398
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abrahams, R. (1998). Vigilant citizens: Vigilantism and the state. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Abrahams, R. (2002). Vigilantism, state jurisdiction and community morality: Control of crime and “undesirable” behaviour when the state “fails.” In Pardo, I. (Ed.), Morals of legitimacy: Between agency and system (pp. 107–126). New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Black, D. (1998). The social structure of right and wrong (Revised ed.). San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bradford, B., Jackson, J., & Hough, M. (2013). Police legitimacy in action: Lessons for theory and practice. In Reisig, M. & Kane, R. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of police and policing (pp. 551–570). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. M. (1975). Strain of violence. Historical studies of American violence and vigilantism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. M. (1976). The history of vigilantism in America. In Rosenbaum, H. J. & Sederberg, P. C. (Eds.), Vigilante politics (pp. 79–109). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Burhmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5.Google Scholar
Haas, N. E., de Keijser, J. W., & Bruinsma, G. J. N. (2012). Public support for vigilantism: An experimental study. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 8, 387–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haas, N. E., de Keijser, J. W., & Bruinsma, G. J. N. (2014). Public support for vigilantism, confidence in police and police responsiveness. Policing & Society, 24, 224–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33, 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huggins, M. K. (1991). Vigilantism and the state in modern Latin America: Essays on extralegal violence. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Jackson, J., Huq, A. Z., Bradford, B., & Tyler, T. R. (2013). Monopolizing force? Police legitimacy and public attitudes toward the acceptability of violence. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19(4), 479.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreml, W. P. (1976). The vigilante personality. In Rosenbaum, H. & Sederberg, P. (Eds.), Vigilante politics (pp. 45–63). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
MacCormick, N., & Garland, D. (1998). Sovereign states and vengeful victims: The problem of the right to punish. In Ashworth, A. & Wasik, M. (Eds.), Fundamentals of sentencing theory: Essays in honour of Andrew von Hirsch (pp. 11–29). Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
McDermott, C. M., & Miller, M. K. (2016). Individual differences impact support for vigilante justice. Journal of Aggression, Conflict, and Peace Research, 8(3), 186–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, M. (2013). Relationship between religious characteristics and responses to vigilantism. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(5), 496–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadelhoffer, T., Shepard, J., Nahmias, E., Sripada, C., & Ross, L. T. (2014). The free will inventory: Measuring beliefs about agency and responsibility. Consciousness and Cognition, 25, 27–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neapolitan, J. (1987). Vigilante behavior and attribution bias. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 14, 123–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, L. D., Simmons, J. P., & Simonsohn, U. (2012). Let’s publish fewer papers. Psychological Inquiry, 23(3), 291–293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paolacci, G., Chandler, J., & Ipeirotis, P. (2010). Running experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 411–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratten, D., & Sen, A. (Eds.). (2008). Global vigilantes: Anthropological perspectives on justice and violence (pp. 267–290). London: Hurst Publishing.Google Scholar
Rand, G. (2012). The promise of Mechanical Turk: How online labor markets can help theorists run behavioral experiments. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 299, 172–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richardson, J. T. (2011). Eta squared and partial eta squared as measures of effect size in educational research. Educational Research Review, 6(2), 135–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenbaum, H. J., & Sederberg, P. C. (1974). Vigilantism: An analysis of establishment violence. Comparative Politics, 6(4), 541–570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenbaum, H. J., & Sederberg, P. C. (Eds.). (1976). Vigilante politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schadt, A. M., & DeLisi, M. (2007). Is vigilantism on your mind? An exploratory study of nuance and contradiction in student death penalty opinion. Criminal Justice Studies, 20(3), 255–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sederberg, P. (1978). The phenomenology of vigilantism in contemporary America: An interpretation. Terrorism, 1(3–4), 287–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuckless, N., & Goranson, R. (1992). The vengeance scale: Development of a measure of attitudes toward revenge. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 7(1), 25.Google Scholar
Weisburd, D. (1988). Vigilantism as community social control: Developing a quantitative criminological model. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 4(2), 137–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiener, R. L., Habert, K., Shkodriani, G., & Staebler, C. (1991). The social psychology of jury nullification: Predicting when jurors disobey the law 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 21(17), 1379–1401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zizumbo-Colunga, D. (2017). Community, authorities, and support for vigilantism: Experimental evidence. Political Behavior, 39, 989–1015.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×