Date of Award
4-2016
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Geography
First Advisor
Dr. Lisa DeChano-Cook
Second Advisor
Dr. Lucius Hallett IV
Third Advisor
Dr. Charles Crawford
Keywords
Geography, Death Penalty, perception, socialpsychology, opinion
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Open Access
Abstract
Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the United States in 1977, research has focused on shifting attitudes and waning public support for this institution. Support for the death penalty varies between different temporal, geographic, and demographic boundaries. Research also suggests that social-psychological factors such as attributional style and moral disengagement play a significant role in rationalization of death penalty support, as well as the intensity of the support. Aspects of moral disengagement serve as reliable predictors for death penalty support for a limited sample of participants, which this research intends to evaluate at a greater scale. This research surveyed geographers at the 2015 American Association of Geographers meeting in Chicago, Illinois by means of a specially designed questionnaire, and results indicate that aspects of moral disengagement do serve as a predictor of death penalty support, although attributional style is less reliable.
Recommended Citation
Moharter, Katy, "A Geographic Distribution Analysis and Examination of Social-Psychological Factors and their lmpact on Death Penalty Support in the United States" (2016). Masters Theses. 696.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/696