Cognitive Science & Psychology Division, ULAB

Previous research in moral psychology has shown that the willingness to protect a criminal an offender from punishment is influenced by emotional closeness to that offender (Weidman et al., 2020). Research has yet to examine cognitive mechanisms and the information considered whendeciding between protecting or reporting the offender. We replicated Experiment 2a of Berg Kitayama, & Kross (2021), which investigated how closeness to the offender and crime severity influence the willingness to protect the offender, as well as the attentional mechanisms informing that decision. Using Berg & colleagues’ (2021) data, we also explored whether familial vs. non-familial and romantic vs. non-romantic close relationships with the transgressorinfluenced the willingness to protect them. The findings from our replication of Experiment 2a revealed that people were (1) more likely to protect emotionally close transgressors than distant transgressors; (2) more likely to protect the transgressor for low severity than high severitycrimes, although the difference between willingness to protect close vs. distant transgressors for high severity crimes was larger than the difference of the willingness to protect a close (vs. distant) transgressor for a low severity crime; (3) paid more attention to details about the personwhen the transgressor was close to them but paid more attention to details about the crime when the offender was distant from them. Additional analysis revealed that familial vs. non-familial and romantic vs. non-romantic relationships with the transgressor predicted no significantdifferences in the willingness to protect them. Further investigation into situational or social factors that influence the link between relationship types and the willingness to protect the transgressor could help us gain greater insight into our behaviors when the expectations about the moral character of close loved ones are violated.