The purpose of these studies is to determine if people punish transgressions harsher if they were committed against one’s genetic offspring opposed to non-genetic offspring. This will be done in two studies, one of paternal relatedness and one of maternal relatedness. Participants will be told they are being asked to participate in a study to understand how people judge criminal cases. They will read a summary of a fictional court case and decide how long to sentence the offender to prison for. The summary they will read in the study on maternal relatedness is either (randomly assigned): Jennifer (last name withheld) was charged with criminal endangerment of a minor after hanging an 18-month old minor by the feet out of a 3rd story window. Jennifer, a 31-year old, gave birth to the child 18 months ago. Jennifer has no history of mental illness or depression. She plead guilty to the charge of criminal endangerment of a minor, claiming “I was trying to scare my child into being quiet because he would not stop crying”. This crime carries with it a prison sentence of 12-60 months. How long do you think Jennifer should be sentenced to prison? Or Jennifer (last name withheld) was charged with criminal endangerment of a minor after hanging an 18-month old minor by the feet out of a 3rd story window. Jennifer, a 31-year old, adopted the child 18 months ago at birth. Jennifer has no history of mental illness or depression. She plead guilty to the charge of criminal endangerment of a minor, claiming “I was trying to scare my child into being quiet because he would not stop crying”. This crime carries with it a prison sentence of 12-60 months. How long do you think Jennifer should be sentenced to prison? They will then be asked to decide on a scale from 12 – 60 how many months the offender should go to prison. The paternal relatedness condition has the same crime, except we include a third condition: Michael (last name withheld), a 31-year old, was charged with criminal endangerment of a minor after hanging an 18-month old minor by the feet out of a 3rd story window. Michael, the child's step-father, married the child's mother shortly after she gave birth. Michael has no history of mental illness or depression. He plead guilty to the charge of criminal endangerment of a minor, claiming “I was trying to scare my child into being quiet because he would not stop crying”. This crime carries with it a prison sentence of 12-60 months. How long do you think Michael should be sentenced to prison? As a quality check we then ask the Ss to recall what the relationship to the child the mother was (Biological Mother/Father, Adoptive Mother/Father, Step-Father (paternal study only), The story did not indicate a relationship, I do not remember). We will remove participants who did not correctly recall the relationship as it is unlikely they paid attention to such information. We will then ask basic demographics and debrief. As per IRB request we will also include an option in the sentencing question “I prefer not to answer”. This may become an interesting DV in itself if the likelihood of choosing this varies between groups of relatedness. We predict people will punish the same crime harsher if the parent is biologically related to the child than if they are not.