Can Linguistic Framing Influence Public Judgments of Neurodiverse Persons in a Criminal Context?

Abstract

The criminal justice system depends on everyday people to judge responsibility of others, which can be complicated by the fact that some alleged perpetrators have conditions associated with stigmas and misunderstandings. In addition, past research has shown that the specific language used to label these conditions may affect how people view them (Howell & Woolgar, 2013; Howell, Ulan, & Powell, 2014). Building on these findings, the present study examined how people would judge an individual accused of committing a misdemeanor crime depending on the particular label used to describe them. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of three fictional news reports describing a young man charged with stalking and then responded to a series of questions assessing their attitudes towards him. In one condition, the alleged perpetrator was presented as neurotypical while in the other two conditions he was presented as autistic; one condition used adjective-phrased/disorder-first language to describe him ("autistic man"), while the other used possessive-phrased/person-first language to describe him ("has autism"). As expected, participants viewed the neurotypical protagonist to be more responsible for their actions, judged them more harshly, viewed them as more dangerous, and desired more social distance from them than both of the neurodiverse protagonists. However, there was no effect of the particular linguistic frame used to describe autism. This suggests that everyday people do take neurodiversity into account when making judgments about alleged criminals, but that different ways of phrasing the same label may have a small effect. Keywords: autism, criminal justice system, judgments, responsibility, linguistic framing, stigmas