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Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity

Although the criminal justice system is designed around the idea that individuals are invariant in their responses to punishment, research indicates that individuals exhibit a tremendous amount of variability in their punishment sensitivity. This raises the question of why; what are the individual-...

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Autores principales: Gassen, Jeffrey, Mengelkoch, Summer, Bradshaw, Hannah K., Hill, Sarah E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323590/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32655448
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01263
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author Gassen, Jeffrey
Mengelkoch, Summer
Bradshaw, Hannah K.
Hill, Sarah E.
author_facet Gassen, Jeffrey
Mengelkoch, Summer
Bradshaw, Hannah K.
Hill, Sarah E.
author_sort Gassen, Jeffrey
collection PubMed
description Although the criminal justice system is designed around the idea that individuals are invariant in their responses to punishment, research indicates that individuals exhibit a tremendous amount of variability in their punishment sensitivity. This raises the question of why; what are the individual- and situation-level variables that impact a person’s sensitivity to punishment? In the current research, we synthesize theory and research on inflammation, learning, and evolutionary biology to examine the relationship between inflammatory activity and sensitivity to punishment. These theories combine to predict that inflammatory activity – which is metabolically costly and reflects a context in which the net payoff associated with future oriented behaviors is diminished – will decrease sensitivity to punishment, but not rewards. Consistent with this hypothesis, Study 1 found that in U.S. states with a higher infectious disease burden (a proxy for average levels of inflammatory activity) exhibit harsher sentencing in their criminal justice systems. Studies 2 and 3 experimentally manipulated variables known to impact bodily inflammatory activity and measured subsequent punishment and reward sensitivity using a probabilistic selection task. Results revealed that (a) increasing inflammation (i.e., completing the study in a dirty vs. clean room) diminished punishment sensitivity (Study 2), whereby (b) administering a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, suppressing inflammatory activity, enhanced it. No such changes were found for reward sensitivity. Together, these results provide evidence of a link between the activities of the immune system and punishment sensitivity, which may have implications for criminal justice outcomes.
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spelling pubmed-73235902020-07-09 Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity Gassen, Jeffrey Mengelkoch, Summer Bradshaw, Hannah K. Hill, Sarah E. Front Psychol Psychology Although the criminal justice system is designed around the idea that individuals are invariant in their responses to punishment, research indicates that individuals exhibit a tremendous amount of variability in their punishment sensitivity. This raises the question of why; what are the individual- and situation-level variables that impact a person’s sensitivity to punishment? In the current research, we synthesize theory and research on inflammation, learning, and evolutionary biology to examine the relationship between inflammatory activity and sensitivity to punishment. These theories combine to predict that inflammatory activity – which is metabolically costly and reflects a context in which the net payoff associated with future oriented behaviors is diminished – will decrease sensitivity to punishment, but not rewards. Consistent with this hypothesis, Study 1 found that in U.S. states with a higher infectious disease burden (a proxy for average levels of inflammatory activity) exhibit harsher sentencing in their criminal justice systems. Studies 2 and 3 experimentally manipulated variables known to impact bodily inflammatory activity and measured subsequent punishment and reward sensitivity using a probabilistic selection task. Results revealed that (a) increasing inflammation (i.e., completing the study in a dirty vs. clean room) diminished punishment sensitivity (Study 2), whereby (b) administering a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, suppressing inflammatory activity, enhanced it. No such changes were found for reward sensitivity. Together, these results provide evidence of a link between the activities of the immune system and punishment sensitivity, which may have implications for criminal justice outcomes. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-06-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7323590/ /pubmed/32655448 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01263 Text en Copyright © 2020 Gassen, Mengelkoch, Bradshaw and Hill. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Gassen, Jeffrey
Mengelkoch, Summer
Bradshaw, Hannah K.
Hill, Sarah E.
Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity
title Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity
title_full Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity
title_fullStr Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity
title_full_unstemmed Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity
title_short Does the Punishment Fit the Crime (and Immune System)? A Potential Role for the Immune System in Regulating Punishment Sensitivity
title_sort does the punishment fit the crime (and immune system)? a potential role for the immune system in regulating punishment sensitivity
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323590/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32655448
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01263
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