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Cited by 321

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 49 of the 49 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Why Do White Americans Support the Death Penalty?

Soss, Joe, Langbein, Laura, Metelko, Alan R.·2003·The Journal of Politics

Abstract

This article explores the roots of white support for capital punishment in the United States. Our analysis addresses individual-level and contextual factors, paying particular attention to how racial attitudes and racial composition influence white support for capital punishment. Our findings suggest that white support hinges on a range of attitudes wider than prior research has indicated, including social and governmental trust and individualist and authoritarian values. Extending individual-level analyses, we also find that white responses to capital punishment are sensitive to local context. Perhaps most important, our results clarify the impact of race in two ways. First, racial prejudice emerges here as a comparatively strong predictor of white support for the death penalty. Second, black residential proximity functions to polarize white opinion along lines of racial attitude. As the black percentage of county residents rises, so too does the impact of racial prejudice on white support for capital punishment.

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Crossref · 10.1111/1468-2508.t01-2-00006

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Metadata

Authors
Soss, J., Langbein, L., & Metelko, A. R.
Venue
The Journal of Politics
Published
2003-05
Volume
65
Issue
2
Pages
397-421
ISSN
  • 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
  • 1468-2508
OpenAlex
W1946644184
Cited by
321
References
49
FWCI
30.84
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Why Do White Americans Support the Death Penalty? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-2-00006
The paper
Soss, J., Langbein, L., & Metelko, A. R. (2003). Why Do White Americans Support the Death Penalty? The Journal of Politics. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.t01-2-00006

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.