Bad acts, blameworthy agents, and intentional actions: Some problems for juror impartiality

Abstract

In this paper, I first review some of the recent empirical work on the biasing effect that moral considerations have on folk ascriptions of intentional action. Then, I use Mark Alicke's affective model of blame attribution to explain this biasing effect. Finally, I discuss the relevance of this research-both philosophical and psychological-to the problem of the partiality of jury deliberation. After all, if the immorality of an action does affect folk ascriptions of intentionality, and all serious criminal offenses-e.g., murder and rape-are immoral in addition to being illegal, then a juror's ability to determine the relevant mens rea (i.e., guilty mind) of a defendant in an unbiased way may be seriously undermined.

Mens rea ascription, expertise and outcome effects: Professional judges surveyed

“…Certain scholars argue that the Knobe effect constitutes a bias, and that the folk use of intentionality is frequently distorted (Adams & Steadman, 2004;Alicke, 2008;Alicke & Rose, 2010;Nadelhoffer, 2004aNadelhoffer, , 2004bNadelhoffer, , 2006Sauer & Bates, 2013). In contrast to such views, several scholars have argued that the Knobe effect testifies to people's competence in intentionality ascriptions (cf.…”

“…What is more, evidence by Nadelhoffer (2006) demonstrates that moral factors independent of outcome valence such as the character of the defendant and victim -certainly not among the 1 A worry: What drives the Knobe effect are differently valenced outcomes. But -one might argue -the distinction between positive and negative moral or normative valence is mute as regards legal matters, since the only outcomes of relevance are negative ones.…”

“…Blamevalidation operates on three types of personal control corresponding to the structural links holding between mental states, behavior and consequences which characterize an action: Volitional behavior control (the mind-behavior link), causal control (the behavior consequence link) and volitional outcome control (the mind-consequence link), which -roughly -correspond to intentionality, causation, and foresight (Alicke & Rose, 2010). The Knobe effect can be interpreted as evidence for exaggerated ascriptions of volitional behavior control, the epistemic side-effect effect and Nadelhoffer's (2006) results about foresight as instances of biased assessments of volitional outcome control. There is also ample evidence consistent with the hypothesis that blame validation increases causal control ascriptions (Alicke, 2000;Cushman, 2010;Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009;Knobe & Fraser, 2008).…”

“…Since blame plays a central role in several explanations of the Knobe effect (e.g. Adams and Steadman (2004), Nadelhoffer (2004aNadelhoffer ( , 2006; for discussion cf. Knobe (2006), Sauer and Bates (2013)) as well as more general accounts such as Alicke's (2000Alicke's ( , 2008 culpable control model, we have also measured blame ascriptions in our experiments.…”

“The Group Knobe Effect”: evidence that people intuitively attribute agency and responsibility to groups

“…In order to do this, we drew upon the so-called "Knobe Effect": Knobe (2003) found that the positiveness or negativeness 2 of sideeffects of actions influences people's assessment of whether those side-effects were brought about intentionally, and also that people are more willing to assign blame for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise for positive side-effect of actions (see also Nadelhoffer 2005Nadelhoffer , 2006Knobe 2006;Nichols and Ulatowski 2007;Malle 2010;Cova 2015). Building upon this body of research, we aimed to answer the question whether a "Group Knobe Effect" (GKE) also obtains, i.e.…”