Dehumanization of offenders predicts how much retributive punishment is directed at them.

Evidence

Indeed, the study of Bastian et al. (2013), reviewed above, is consistent with a moral disengagement perspective (though it is also consistent with an inferential account): the harmful agents (e.g., violent offenders) in their study were dehumanized and it was the degree to which the targets were dehumanized that predicted the severity of retributive justice directed at them. — Mansur Khamitov, Jeff D. Rotman, and Jared Piazza, Perceiving the Agency of Harmful Agents, 163

Categorization

• QUESTION: The evidence is ambiguous — dehumanization correlates with punitiveness but cannot distinguish inference from motivated disengagement.