“Internally Wicked”: Investigating How and Why Essentialism Influences Punitiveness and Moral Condemnation

Kant argued that individuals should be punished “proportional to their internal wickedness,” and recent work has demonstrated essentialism—the notion observable characteristics reflect internal, biological, unchanging “essences”—influences moral judgment. However, these efforts have yielded conflicting results: essentialism sometimes increases decreases condemnation. To resolve discrepancies, we investigated the mechanisms by which influences judgment, focusing on perceptions of actors’ control over behavior, target (particular behaviors vs. character), component (biology immutability). Participants people described as having a criminal essence more than those with non-criminal or no essence. Probing potential underlying this effect, found mediating role for weak focus (behavior character) These results extend prior cognition, demonstrating causal link between “internal wickedness” Our findings also discrepancies in past influence highlighting behavior play