On People’s Worries about Becoming a Victim of Events or Conditions Often Blamed on Those up There

The authors study people’s worries about becoming victimized by events and conditions often blamed on“those up there”.Excessive worries are bad for people’s performance because they lead to risk avoidance and lower self-confidence.In two representative surveys conducted in Germany,it is found that victimization concerns are positively correlated with people’s gender,previous victimization,their estimated likelihood of being victimized,their fear of crime,their crime-avoidance behavior,their striving for tradition and security,and their negative attitudes toward crimes.Negative correlations are found for people’s education,their striving for universalism,and their social capital.When considering all predictors combined,people’s expected likelihood to become victimized is found to be the optimal predictor of victimization concerns.It is recommended that management concentrates on setting realistic levels of such risk estimates to avoid negative effects on people’s performance.

Inside and Outside Perspectives on the Relation of People’s Personal Values and Their Acceptance of Legal Norms

Based on a representative survey on crime prevention,this paper studies how personal values are related to persons’acceptance of legal norms(LNA).We here take a closer look at these relations than previous research.Offenses,in particular,are classified into different offense types,and the persons’ratings are studied both as observed and as individually centered data.It is found that conservation-oriented persons give higher and less differentiated badness ratings to all offenses than persons striving for hedonism and stimulation.The correlational structure of basic personal values and norm acceptance ratings for 14 different offenses,when represented via multidimensional scaling,exhibits that conservation orientation becomes a better predictor of LNA of all offense types if it is augmented by an additional value,peace of mind.When looking at centered ratings(i.e.,controlling for each person’s mean ratings),social values become the best predictors of offenses such as tax evasion,benefits fraud,or taking bribes.Statements on the impact of personal values on general norm acceptance should,therefore,be replaced with more differentiated relations on how particular values are related to people’s attitudes towards particular offenses.