Desiring to Punish Leaders: A New Test of the Model of People as Intuitive Prosecutors

When a national leader is accused of impropriety, people often desire his ouster. To explain such desire for punishment, the authors tested two predictions of the model of intuitive prosecutors. One was that continuing in the position after an allegation activates the prosecutorial mind among people but resignation deactivates it. Another was that the relation between an inappropriate response by the leader and the desired punishment is mediated sequentially by dispositional attribution to, outrage with, and attitude toward him. In Experiment 1, the accused leader had resigned (i.e., already punished) or hadn’t resigned from the position (i.e., remained unpunished). In Experiment 2, he had also cooperated with (i.e., an appropriate response) or threatened the accusers and the investigators (i.e., an inappropriate response). Participants (Ns = 168 and 200) made the dispositional attribution, outrage, attitude, and punishment responses to the leader. Results supported both predictions. Theoretical, methodological, and applied implications of the findings are discussed.