Neuroscience
Do you think repeat offenders should be punished more harshly than first-time offenders for the same crime? Does it make any difference if I make it clear that the specific hypothetical crime in question has caused the same harm in each case? If you still think the repeat offender should be punished more harshly, you're not alone. In fact this approach to justice is written into law in many countries. First time offenders can expect leniency whereas repeat offenders can expect severe punishment.
Why is it our moral intuition to take this stance? Dorit Kliemann and colleagues have tested the idea that it has to do with intentionality. If a repeat offender commits a crime, we are more likely to believe they did so intentionally than if a first-time offender commits the same act. The researchers argue this attribution of intentionality justifies our initial intuitive judgement that the repeat offender is more blameworthy.
Dozens of university students played an economic game against ten fictitious other students who were identified by a photograph (the participants were tricked into thinking these were real students enrolled in the same experiment). Some of these fictitious students played fairly whereas the others played selfishly. Later on the participants read stories about good or bad acts committed by those same students they'd played earlier. In the stories, intent was kept deliberately ambiguous.
Crucially, when the participants read about a bad act (e.g. shrinking a neighbour's new sweater) committed by a previously unfair student, they were more likely to attribute blame and intent to that student, compared with when the same act was committed by a student who'd previously played fairly. Moreover, scans taken of the participants' brains showed that a bad act committed by a previously unfair student led to greater activation of regions involved in attributing intentional states to others. The timing of this intent-related brain activity occurred after participants had decided how blameworthy the student was.
"One possibility," the researchers said, "is that subjects first feel an impulse to blame previously unfair people for causing negative outcomes, and then subsequently seek to justify this impulse by attributing to them negative intentions."
By contrast, when it came to good acts, a fictional students' earlier fairness had no bearing on how the participants allocated intent, nor on how their brain responded to hearing about that good act.
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D KLIEMANN, L YOUNG, J SCHOLZ, R SAXE (2008). The influence of prior record on moral judgment☆ Neuropsychologia, 46 (12), 2949-2957 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.06.010
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Why do we want to punish repeat offenders so harshly?
Do you think repeat offenders should be punished more harshly than first-time offenders for the same crime? Does it make any difference if I make it clear that the specific hypothetical crime in question has caused the same harm in each case? If you still think the repeat offender should be punished more harshly, you're not alone. In fact this approach to justice is written into law in many countries. First time offenders can expect leniency whereas repeat offenders can expect severe punishment.Why is it our moral intuition to take this stance? Dorit Kliemann and colleagues have tested the idea that it has to do with intentionality. If a repeat offender commits a crime, we are more likely to believe they did so intentionally than if a first-time offender commits the same act. The researchers argue this attribution of intentionality justifies our initial intuitive judgement that the repeat offender is more blameworthy.
Dozens of university students played an economic game against ten fictitious other students who were identified by a photograph (the participants were tricked into thinking these were real students enrolled in the same experiment). Some of these fictitious students played fairly whereas the others played selfishly. Later on the participants read stories about good or bad acts committed by those same students they'd played earlier. In the stories, intent was kept deliberately ambiguous.
Crucially, when the participants read about a bad act (e.g. shrinking a neighbour's new sweater) committed by a previously unfair student, they were more likely to attribute blame and intent to that student, compared with when the same act was committed by a student who'd previously played fairly. Moreover, scans taken of the participants' brains showed that a bad act committed by a previously unfair student led to greater activation of regions involved in attributing intentional states to others. The timing of this intent-related brain activity occurred after participants had decided how blameworthy the student was.
"One possibility," the researchers said, "is that subjects first feel an impulse to blame previously unfair people for causing negative outcomes, and then subsequently seek to justify this impulse by attributing to them negative intentions."
By contrast, when it came to good acts, a fictional students' earlier fairness had no bearing on how the participants allocated intent, nor on how their brain responded to hearing about that good act.
_________________________________
D KLIEMANN, L YOUNG, J SCHOLZ, R SAXE (2008). The influence of prior record on moral judgment☆ Neuropsychologia, 46 (12), 2949-2957 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.06.010Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Guilt Is Catching
Shaking hands with a cheat or thief, or merely sitting in a chair they used, is likely to make you experience feelings of guilt. That's according to a new study, the first to demonstrate "moral transfer" between people. Kendall Eskine and his colleagues...
- Exonerated But Forever Tarnished? On The Lingering Stigma Of The Wrongfully Convicted
Wrongful convictions are disturbingly common. In the USA alone, over 1,050 innocent people who were found guilty in court have subsequently been exonerated. A new study, the first to systematically study stigma towards convicted innocents, finds that...
- What Makes Revenge Sweet?
Does it matter if the punished don't understand what they did wrong?'To bring him back to a more just sense of what he owes us, and of the wrong that he has done to us, is frequently the principal end posed in our revenge, which is always imperfect...
- The Fingerprint Of Where And When A Burglary Is Committed
In the land of fiction, it's the criminal's modus operandi - his method of entry, his taste for certain jewellery and so forth - that can be used by detectives to identify his handiwork. The reality according to a new analysis of solved burglaries...
- We Continue To Blame Rape Victims
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