Perish the Forethought: Premeditation Engenders Misperceptions of Personal Control

Abstract

People are normally encouraged to engage in premeditation-to think about the potential consequences of their behavior before acting. Indeed, planning, considering, and studying can be important precursors to decision making, and often seem to be essential to effective action. This view of premeditation is shared by most humans, a kind of universal ideal, and it carries an additional interesting implication: Even the hint that premeditation occurred can serve as a potent cue indicating voluntary action, both to actors and observers. In legal and moral contexts, for example, actors are seen as especially culpable for the consequences of their actions if those consequences were premeditated, whether or not the premeditation influenced the decision. In this chapter, we review evidence indicating that the perception of premeditation itself can lead people to think that an action's consequences are under personal control, and that this occurs even when the premeditation is irrelevant to the production of the consequences. We present research exploring how various forms of perceived premeditation-including foresight, effortful forethought, wishful thinking, and the consideration of multiple possible outcomes of action-may lead actors to prefer and feel responsible for action outcomes even when this premeditation has no causal relation to the outcomes.Premeditation Engenders False Perceptions of Personal Control 3 "Except only the defendant's intention to produce a given result, no other consideration has affected our feeling that it is or is not just to hold him responsible for the result as its foreseeability." -Edgerton, (1929, p. 1134). Legal Cause. Harper and James. (cited by Hart & Honoré, 1959/2002 It feels necessary to think carefully before making important decisions. Whether buying a house, picking a spouse, or deciding to have children, it seems unwise to make a decision quickly, or to simply pick the first option we considered. Even relatively inconsequential choices are preceded by significant forethought. When buying a new digital camera, for example, we might read Consumer Reports, compare features such as lenses and weight, and try to imagine which would be better suited for our next family gathering or vacation. We engage in such forethought because premeditated decisionschoices guided by prior conscious deliberation of alternatives and their consequencesare considered superior to decisions made on the fly or in its absence.1 Our parents, teachers, and peers continually advise us to "Look before you leap," and "Think before you speak," and when we make poor choices, they are often attributed to errors committed during premeditation ("What on Earth was I thinking?"). Premeditated decisions appear to determine the behavior most under our control, and behavior we control is presumed to be better than behavior we do not. Furthermore, both the legal system and society at large view the presence of premeditation as the most important indicator of rational action (Denno, 2003). Premeditation Engender...