Demons with firepower: How belief in pure evil relates to perceptions and punishments of gun violence perpetrators

Mass shootings have received widespread media attention due to their extreme violence. People who report greater belief in pure evil (BPE; the tendency to attribute harmdoing to dispositionally sadistic individuals) generally favor harsher criminal punishment, regardless of whether criminals exhibit stereotypically “evil” traits. We examined whether BPE predicted evaluations of gun violence perpetrators despite different situational factors...