Attribution of Responsibility: From Man the Scientist to Man As Lawyer

Fincham, Frank D.; Jaspars, Jos

doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60131-8

Cited by 260 publications

(236 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…The second epoch was ushered in when the intuitive scientist metaphor of causal judgment gave way to an "intuitive-lawyer" metaphor (Fincham & Jaspars, 1980). This approach derived from the legal philosophers Hart and Honoré (1959) and emphasized the aspects of causal influence that were relevant for ascribing responsibility.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Alicke

Mandel

Hilton

et al. 2015

Perspect Psychol Sci

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Understanding the causes of human behavior is essential for advancing one's interests and for coordinating social relations. The scientific study of how people arrive at such understandings or explanations has unfolded in four distinguishable epochs in psychology, each characterized by a different metaphor that researchers have used to represent how people think as they attribute causality and blame to other individuals. The first epoch was guided by an "intuitive scientist" metaphor, which emphasized whether observers perceived behavior to be caused by the unique tendencies of the actor or by common reactions to the requirements of the situation. This metaphor was displaced in the second epoch by an "intuitive lawyer" depiction that focused on the need to hold people responsible for their misdeeds. The third epoch was dominated by theories of counterfactual thinking, which conveyed a "person as reconstructor" approach that emphasized the antecedents and consequences of imagining alternatives to events, especially harmful ones. With the current upsurge in moral psychology, the fourth epoch emphasizes the moralevaluative aspect of causal judgment, reflected in a "person as moralist" metaphor. By tracing the progression from the person-environment distinction in early attribution theories to present concerns with moral judgment, our goal is to clarify how causal constructs have been used, how they relate to one another, and what unique attributional problems each addresses.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Alicke

Mandel

Hilton

et al. 2015

Perspect Psychol Sci

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“…The fact that no evidence for defensive attribution was found, supports the view that this is one of the more elusive findings in social psychology (cf. Fishbein & Ajzen, 1973;Fincham & Jaspars, 1980). The two findings which might appear to be consistent with motivational distortions are both equivocal.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social categorization and personal similarity as determinants of attribution bias: A test of defensive attribution

Fincham

Hewstone

1982

British J Social Psychol

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Shaver's (1970) defensive attribution hypothesis was tested systematically. Personal similarity, situational relevance and outcome severity were manipulated. Also studied was the importance of social categorization as a determinant of responsibility attribution bias, as an extension of 'minimal' intergroup studies. Seventy-six schoolboys were assigned to the cells of a 2 (categorization)x2 (similarity) factorial design. Each subject read three accidents ostensibly involving unidentified others from the same experimental condition. Judgements of blame, situational relevance, perceived similarity and carelessness were elicited. carelessness ratings ( P < O m ) . Outcome severity affected blame (P<0.025) and carelessness (P<0.01). Categorization had no effect. Thus, no support for the defensive attribution hypothesis nor for attributional bias based on such minimal similarity and categorization manipulations was found.Neither similarity nor situational relevance affected attributions, but similarity had an effect on

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“…Hopefully, the assessment ability of psychiatrists nowadays achieves a higher grade of predictive accuracy, but there is a striking doubt whether the risk assessment should be based on the methods mentioned above exclusively. Thus the need for additional investigator-independent-and thus hopefully more objective-criteria in current forensic risk assessment and therapy evaluation should lead to the development of an additional and strictly scientific method of predicting crime and the outcome of treatment (Bandura, 1986;Finchham & Jaspars, 1980). Biological criteria could contribute, for example, considering them to be objective criteria as they are provided by neuroscience, i.e.…”

Section: Assessment In Forensic Psychiatrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurophilosophical perspectives of neuroimaging in forensic psychiatry—giving way to a paradigm shift?

Witzel¹,

Walter²,

Bogerts³

et al. 2008

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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Forensic psychiatry is concerned with the relationship between psychiatric abnormalities and legal violations and crimes. Due to the lack of available biological criteria, evaluation and therapy in forensic psychiatry have so far been restricted to psychosocial and mental criteria of offenders' personalities. Recent advances in neurosciences allow a closer approach to the neural correlates of personality, moral judgments and decision-making. We propose to discuss the introduction of biological criteria in the field of forensic psychiatry and to establish rules as to what extent such biological criteria will be a better and more reliable choice in judging mentally ill criminals by using all available information that can be obtained by biological means. Psychosocial and subjective criteria in forensic evaluation will be more and more accomplished by biopsychosocial and objective criteria. The responsibility of having committed a criminal act will no longer be exclusively defined by judging free and voluntary decision-making, but rather by brain-behavior relationships. What is often referred to as psychosocially determined mental processes thus could be complemented by estimating the degree of biopsychosocially determined neural processes. We conclude that such a process could contribute to a paradigm shift in forensic psychiatry, which will have profound implications for offenders, forensic psychologists and psychiatrists, the law and society in general.

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Attribution of Responsibility: From Man the Scientist to Man As Lawyer

Cited by 260 publications

References 66 publications

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

Social categorization and personal similarity as determinants of attribution bias: A test of defensive attribution

Neurophilosophical perspectives of neuroimaging in forensic psychiatry—giving way to a paradigm shift?

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