Reasonableness on the Clapham Omnibus: Exploring the Outcome-Sensitive Folk Concept of Reasonable

Kneer, Markus

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-11744-2_3

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…And indeed, mean knowledge and desire attribution are extremely low in both our experiments using the Festival vignette (Studies 1 and 2, all Ms < 2.50, significantly below the midpoint of the scale, all ps < .001), and those using the Trash Bag vignette (Study 3, all Ms < 2.24, significantly below the midpoint, all ps < .001). Instead of the inculpating mental states of knowledge and desire to harm, one might want to test the carelessness or negligence of the agent, which is determined in relation to how reasonably foreseeable the accident was (Engelmann & Waldmann, 2021Kirfel & Lagnado, 2021a, 2021bLagnado & Channon, 2008;Kneer & Machery, 2019;Kneer, 2022;Nobes & Martin, 2022;Sarin & Cushman, 2022, Murray et al 2023. It could turn out that participants judge agents that violate norms -even nonpertinent or silly ones -as acting more negligently than their norm-adhering counterparts and thus rightfully consider them more responsible.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Güver,

Kneer

2024

Preprint

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Extant research has shown that ordinary causal judgments are sensitive to normative factors. For instance, agents who violate a norm are standardly deemed more causal than norm-conforming agents in identical situations. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for the Norm Effect: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. According to the former, the Norm Effect arises because ordinary causal judgment is intimately intertwined with moral responsibility. According to the alternative view, the Norm Effect is the result of a blame-driven bias. In a series of five preregistered experiments (N = 2688), we present evidence that predominantly favours the Bias View. In particular, and against predictions made by the Responsibility View, we show that participants deem agents who violate nonpertinent or silly norms – norms that do not relate to the outcome at hand – as more causal, and that this effect cannot be explained in terms of plausible mediators such as the agent’s foreknowledge and desire, or the foreseeability of harm. We close with a discussion regarding the implications of these findings, in as regards the just assessment of proximate cause in the law.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Güver,

Kneer

2024

Preprint

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“…Notably, though, our results did not find evidence of a meaningful difference between lay people and legal professionals with regard to the outcome bias and anti‐inference bias. With respect to the former, some have raised concerns that a substantive rule requiring adjudicators to assess negligence while ignoring outcomes may drive a wedge between prevailing public views and the output of the legal system (e.g., Kneer, 2022; Kneer & Machery, 2019). Our results suggest that this concern may be overstated, since the outcome bias in our study affected legal professionals and lay people to a similar degree.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons

Teichman,

Zamir,

Ritov

2023

J Empirical Legal Studies

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Previous studies of judgment and decision‐making in adjudication have largely focused on juries and judges. This body of work demonstrated that legal training and professional experience sometimes affect attitudes and mitigate the susceptibility to cognitive biases, but often they do not. Relatively few experimental studies examined the decisions of prosecutors and defense lawyers, although they play a major role, especially in legal systems where prosecutors have a broad discretion in charging decisions, courts' discretion regarding sentencing is constrained, and plea bargains abound. This study directly compares laypersons, law students, and legal practitioners—including prosecutors and defense lawyers—in terms of their attitudes about the criminal justice system and their cognitive biases. It was found that the outcome bias and the anti‐inference bias influenced all groups similarly, but an irrelevant anchor only impacted the decisions of laypersons and law students, and not those of legal professionals. Prosecutors were significantly more inclined to judge a behavior as negligent and reach factual conclusions supporting a conviction. However, the hypothesis that the susceptibility of prosecutors and defense lawyers to cognitive biases would be affected by their role was not borne out. The article considers possible explanations for the reported findings, and discusses their policy implications.

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“…Since our vignettes involve accidents, it comes as no surprise participants do not ascribe knowledge or desire to the agent. What we should be testing instead is the carelessness or negligence of the agent, which is determined in relation to how reasonably foreseeable the accident was (Engelmann & Waldmann, 2021;Kirfel & Lagnado, 2021;Lagnado & Channon, 2008;Kneer & Machery, 2019;Kneer, 2022;Nobes & Martin, 2022;Sarin & Cushman, 2022). Participants might judge agents that violate norms -even nonpertinent or silly ones -as acting more negligently than their norm-adhering counterparts and thus rightfully consider them more responsible.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causation, Foreseeability, and Norms

Güver¹,

Kneer²

2023

Preprint

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A growing body of literature has revealed ordinary causal judgement to be sensitive to normative factors, such that a norm-violating agent is regarded more causal than their non-norm-violating counterpart. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for this phenomenon: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. The Bias View, but not the Responsibility View, predicts features peripheral to the agent’s responsibility to impact causal attributions. In a series of three preregistered experiments (N = 1162), we present new evidence that the Norm Effect arises from such peripheral features, namely from nonpertinent or entirely silly norm violations. Furthermore, we show that this effect cannot be explained by recourse to the agent’s foreknowledge or desire of the outcome, nor by its foreseeability: the Norm Effect arises even when participants judge the norm-violating agent’s doing as equally foreseeable. This, we argue, provides evidence in favour of the Bias View.

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Reasonableness on the Clapham Omnibus: Exploring the Outcome-Sensitive Folk Concept of Reasonable

Cited by 13 publications

References 52 publications

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Biases in legal decision‐making: Comparing prosecutors, defense attorneys, law students, and laypersons

Causation, Foreseeability, and Norms

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