Research article Leniency for out-group offenders JUDITH BRAUN* AND MARIO GOLLWITZER Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany Abstract The present research investigates leniency for out-group offenders and differentiates it from the black sheep effect. The authors assume that leniency for out-group offenders can be used by in-group members to protect their group’s image by displaying that they are not prejudiced. Thus, leniency should disappear when in-group members have otherwise shown that they are not prejudiced (i.e., moral credentials). In two experiments, offenders’ group membership and participants’ opportunity to establish moral credentials were manipulated. Results showed that out-group offenders received the lowest punishment severity ratings (Studies 1 and 2). However, this leniency effect vanished when participants had established moral credentials by either endors- ing the participation of out-group members in lobby groups (Study 1) or writing about a positive experience with an out-group member (Study 2). These findings suggest that lenient punishments for out-group offenders may sometimes reflect a relatively easy strategy to display the in-group as being unprejudiced. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION People often recommend different punishments for offenders from different groups. Classical and modern theories of intergroup relations provide different explanations for this phenomenon. Social identity theory predicts that offenders who belong to the same group as the judging person (“in-group offenders”) should profit from in-group favoritism (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and should thus be punished more leniently by in-group members than offenders who belong to an out-group. Research on the “black sheep effect” (BSE), on the other hand, suggests that in-group offenders should be punished more harshly than out-group offenders because their actions threaten the opportunity to derive a positive social identity from being a mem- ber of the in-group (e.g., Marques, Abrams, & Serôdio, 2001; Marques & Paez, 1994; Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988). Empirically, the current pattern of published findings provides no clear answer to the question of whether in-group offenders are punished more harshly or rather more leniently than out-group offenders. Some studies suggest that out-group offenders receive harsher punishment than in-group offenders (Graham, Weiner, & Zucker, 1997; Sommers & Ellsworth, 2000, 2001; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2006). Other research, however, has found no compelling evidence that the offenders’ group membership affects punitive judgments, neither in controlled vignette studies (e.g., Mazzella & Feingold, 1994) nor in real court cases (e.g., Williams & Holcomb, 2001). Finally, there are also studies showing that out-group offenders receive more lenient punishments and more positive evaluations than do in-group offenders. For instance, Feather and Souter (2002) found that an Aboriginal Australian offender was consid- ered less responsible for a case of theft and, accordingly, perceived as less deserving of the sentence than a White Australian perpetra- tor who committed the same offense. In the same vein, Gordon (1993) showed that Black offenders were assigned more lenient sentences than White offenders (also Feather & Oberdan, 2000; Gordon, Bindrim, McNicholas, & Walden, 1988; Kemmelmeier, 2005). In the present research, we discuss a possible explanation for such a leniency effect. One might argue that the in-group–out-group difference in punitive responses simply reflects a BSE. This implies that the effect is driven by particularly harsh judgment on the in-group offender, not some sort of leniency for the out-group offender. Differentiating a leniency effect from a BSE therefore requires a baseline of punitive responses and an appropriate experimental control group. However, most of the research on the BSE did not use a control group; therefore, it is difficult to rule out that the out-group offender profited from a particularly lenient judgment. In the present research, we will investigate the possibility that out-group offenders are punished more leniently than in-group offenders as well as offenders in a control condition in which the offenders’ group membership is irrelevant. Moreover, we will scrutinize the possibility that leniency for out-group offenders can be considered a strategic reaction by the in-group that serves to maintain and foster a positive image of the in-group. On a theoretical level, this phenomenon has been referred to as the “patronizing leniency” effect (Gollwitzer, Keller, & Braun, 2012). However, it has not been empirically investigated so far. Our research fills this gap. *Correspondence to: Judith Braun, Department of Psychology, Philipps-University Marburg, Gutenbergstrasse 18, 35032 Marburg, Germany. E-mail: judith.braun@staff.uni-marburg.de European Journal of Social Psychology, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 42, 883–892 (2012) Published online 15 October 2012 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.1908 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 23 November 2011, Accepted 27 February 2012