Punishing Offenders

The is a well written, well-designed study that has the potential to be an important contribution to the literature. I have invited two expert in the field to review the manuscript and they have both provided very useful and important comments.  I outline below the comments that I view as most important, along with a few of my own suggestions.  

Both reviewers expressed concern with the way the victim identifiability findings were summarized on p. 5.  I suggest you consider both reviewers comments and then revise this section to address the publication bias in the metanalysis, which may help explain why victim identifiability did not replicate.  I also suggest that you address what this means for the importance of the topic.  

Like Dr Feldman, I wondered about how you chose the features of identifiability.  Why might including a photo, name and age matter, out of all the ways an offender could be identified?  I see that you will control for gender.  Will you also control for race or any other features?

I thought that H1 could have been written more clearly. By “weaker intention to punish” do you mean a smaller effect or a reversed effect where identified would be punished less than unidentified in the 3rd party condition?

Both reviewers mentioned that you might want to revise the way you treat the mediation analysis.  I agree with them (especially concerns about power for the mediation analysis), but I also see the mediation analysis as a valuable way to investigate how these factors might contribute differently.  Your hypotheses are all very similar, in that victims will judge the offender more negatively than third parties.  If these DV are each uniquely useful to building a theory, it would be helpful to show how that they go beyond more or less negative attitudes.  Your 5th hypothesis might shed light on how these factors differ if you predicted or explored more specific effects. My suggestion is to use the mediation analysis as an exploratory test.

There is only one trial to test the effect, despite that you note that context is likely to have an effect on judgments.  I wonder why you chose pickpocketing and what features of pickpocketing might differ from other crimes in ways that could impact punishment and other relate judgments. I suggest you add more justification for selecting that particular crime, and later consider discussing how different crime might differ (which could be in the future-discussion).

Check the language of a “hard treatment.”  I am a native English speaker and I agree with Dr Feldman that a “hard treatment” does not sound right.  I do think you can say wither “angry at” or “angry with” or at least both sound correct to me.

The other suggestions from the reviewers were also very useful, and I hope they will be helpful to you.  Please note that I am transitioning into a new role, and so I can’t be sure that I will be available to act as a recommender for future manuscripts. Therefore, even more than usual, please do consider my suggestions as suggestions and not requirements.