Intuitive emotions play an important role in the choice of sanctions in a criminal context.
This is at least the conclusion of a research team from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), the University of Ottawa and McGill University, which became the first to quantify the knee-jerk emotional reaction of those who have to decide the sentence of a criminal.
“We are very excited about these results because they allow us to show when and how emotion emerges when making decisions about the punishment of crimes,” said study lead researcher Carolyn Côté. Lussier.
“There is a growing interest in intuitive anger in the field of criminology, but nobody was able to measure it. We have succeeded !” added the teacher.
Thus, in order to carry out this study, the researchers “asked 87 students to decide, based on the photos of about fifty male criminals, whether they should be sentenced to prison or no”. ‘Facial electromyography (fEMG)’ technology was then used to measure, in microvolts, the activation of muscles responsible for frowning in students who needed to make a decision as quickly as possible.
The study showed that it only took a fraction of a second (0.5 seconds) for anger to manifest, although on average the decision was made in 1.3 seconds. “Research shows that anger is felt before an individual can form an opinion about a specific crime, the current crime rate, or even sending someone to jail,” explained the project co-author, Jean Denis David.
It has also been shown that a stronger emotion is perceived in front of the image of an individual with the traits of a “stereotypical criminal”.
“The purpose of this research is to remind us that we cannot get rid of our emotions. They are omnipresent,” explained Professor Côté-Lussier.