Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday 2 October 2010 Like all
students of wrongness, I’m fascinated by research into
irrational beliefs and behaviours, but I’m also suspicious of
how far you can stretch the findings from a laboratory into the
real world. A cracking new paper from Social Psychology and
Personality Science makes a neat attempt to address this
shortcoming. Loran Nordgren and Mary McDonnell wanted to see
whether our perception of the severity of a crime was affected
by the number of people affected. 60 students were given a
vignette to read about a case of fraud, where either 3 people or
30 people were defrauded by a financial advisor, but all the
other information in the story was kept the same. In an ideal
world, you’d imagine that someone who harmed more people would
deserve a harsher treatment. Participants were asked to evaluate
the severity of the crime, and recommend a punishment: even
though fewer people were affected, participants who read the
story with only 3 victims rated the crime as