The Effect of Outcome Severity on Moral Judgment and Interpersonal Goals of Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders

Frisch, Lisa Katharina; Kneer, Markus; Krueger, Joachim I.; Ullrich, Johannes

doi:10.31234/osf.io/9gnw6

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(80 reference statements)

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“…Notably, this pattern of results has been obtained repeatedly in studies using the CSIG (e.g., Frisch et al, 2021;Aydin et al, 2019b), supporting our reasoning that agentic and communal goals as measured by the CSIG map well onto the needs for empowerment and acceptance postulated by the needs-based model (see SimanTov-Nachlieli et al, 2013).…”

Section: Testing the Model In Contexts Of Intergroup Transgressionssupporting

confidence: 85%

The needs-based model of reconciliation: How identity restoration processes can contribute to more harmonious and equal social relations

Shnabel¹,

Ullrich²,

Nadler³

2023

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

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Section: Testing the Model In Contexts Of Intergroup Transgressionssupporting

confidence: 85%

The needs-based model of reconciliation: How identity restoration processes can contribute to more harmonious and equal social relations

Shnabel¹,

Ullrich²,

Nadler³

2023

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

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“…Finally, we tested three types of moral judgment: blame, moral responsibility, and deserved punishment, 45 to see how they behave with respect to different types of norm violations (labels in bold omitted):…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causation and the Silly Norm Effect

Güver¹,

Kneer²

2023

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Law

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Whereas in certain domains, the law relies on terms of art (e.g., "injunction, " "double jeopardy, " "punitive damages, " and "bankruptcy"), in others-in particular in criminal law-it invokes, or takes itself to invoke, the plain everyday meaning of the expressions used. is is unsurprising: citizens, standardly not equipped with a law degree, must understand what the law says in order to adhere to it. Furthermore, in common law jurisdictions, nonexperts help decide court cases in jury trials. And when it comes to disputes in statutory interpretation among judges, turning to ordinary meaning is one, if not-as some scholars and practitioners argue 1 -the evident strategy to resolve them. 2 According to what we term the correspondence assumption, certain central legal expressions are taken to refer to the same concepts as their corresponding ordinary language analogues (at least within designated spheres of the law). Candidate concepts for the correspondence assumption are plentiful. Consent is one. At a recent sexual misconduct trial in the United States, the judge refused to provide conceptual classification and stated that "the jury will decide what consent means to them" (Puente, Sloan, & Deerwester, 2018; for empirical work on the notion of consent, see Sommers, 2020). e expression "reasonable" and the concept it denotes constitute another example. As Gardner (2015) writes, the reasonable person standard "exists to allow the law to pass the buck, to help itself pro tempore to standards of justification that are not themselves set by the law" (p. 36). Naturally, for a maneuver of this sort to even begin to make sense, it must be assumed that the lay person's concept of reasonableness fits the law's demands. 3 In many jurisdictions, the central mens rea concepts, such as intention, are subject to the correspondence assumption-which is perhaps one of the key reasons why, very frequently, they are le partially or entirely uncodified. 4 e English courts have made this explicit stating that "the legal meaning of the word 'intention' is the ordinary meaning of the word" (Herring, 2012, p. 135). In R v. Moloney [1985], Lord Bridge put it as follows:

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Outcome Effects, Moral Luck and the Hindsight Bias

Kneer

Skoczeń

2021

SSRN Journal

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In a series of ten preregistered experiments (N=2043), we investigate the effect of outcome valence on judgments of probability, negligence, and culpability -a phenomenon sometimes labelled moral (and legal) luck. We found that harmful outcomes, when contrasted with neutral outcomes, lead to increased perceived probability of harm ex post, and consequently to increased attribution of negligence and culpability. Rather than simply postulating a hindsight bias (as is common), we employ a variety of empirical means to demonstrate that the outcome-driven asymmetry across perceived probabilities constitutes a systematic cognitive distortion. We then explore three distinct strategies to alleviate the hindsight bias and its downstream effects on mens rea and culpability ascriptions. Not all are successful, but at least some prove promising. They should, we argue, be taken into consideration in criminal jurisprudence, where distortions due to the hindsight bias are likely considerable and deeply disconcerting.The practical problem, however, must be taken seriously: In everyday life, we are not confronted with two neat cases side-by-side. Usually, we assess situations where a concrete harm has occurred and here outcome is likely to have a distorting effect on our judgment, violating the Control Principle to which both the Law and the Folk are committed. The Mechanics of the Outcome EffectHow can we alleviate the outcome effect? This depends, in parts, on its more intricate mechanics. There is some evidence in favour of a probabilistic account of moral luck-type phenomena (Kamin & Rachlinski, 1995;Kneer & Machery, 2019). On this account, the post-hoc probability of harming a child is perceived higher for Frank than for Su. It thus seems more appropriate to judge that Frank incurred a substantial risk than that Su did, which, in turn would mean he was more reckless or negligent than Su. 1 If this account is on the right track, then a perceived difference in probability and risk drives an asymmetry of risk-related inculpating mental states and hence moral (and legal) evaluation (see Figure 1). The whole series of inferences from descriptive features to normative evaluation is innocuous, except for the first step, which is affected by the hindsight bias: in Frank's case, people tend to exaggerate the degree to which a harmful outcome could, or should, have been anticipated (Fischhoff, 1975;1980). To address the distorting effect of outcome on culpability judgments, this suggests, we must find ways to alleviate the hindsight bias -which is the topic of the paper.The paper proceeds as follows: We first explore whether the probabilistic account of the effect of outcome on culpability replicates (section 2). Our experiments are the first to control explicitly for the distinction between objective probability (probability from the perspective of the universe) and subjective probability (as perceived from the agent's context). Having replicated the outcome effect on probability, mens rea and moral judgment, we show -rather than jus...

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The Effect of Outcome Severity on Moral Judgment and Interpersonal Goals of Perpetrators, Victims, and Bystanders

Cited by 5 publications

References 45 publications

The needs-based model of reconciliation: How identity restoration processes can contribute to more harmonious and equal social relations

The needs-based model of reconciliation: How identity restoration processes can contribute to more harmonious and equal social relations

Causation and the Silly Norm Effect

Outcome Effects, Moral Luck and the Hindsight Bias

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