Wrong or merely prohibited: Special treatment of strict liability in intuitive moral judgment.

Abstract

Most crimes in America require that the defendant have mens rea, Latin for "guilty mind." However, mens rea is not legally required for strict liability crimes, such as speeding, for which someone is guilty even if ignorant or deceived about her speed. In 3 experiments involving participants responding to descriptive vignettes, we investigated whether the division of strict liability crimes in the law reflects an aspect of laypeople's intuitive moral cognition. Experiment 1 (N = 396; 236 male, 159 female, 1 other; M = 30) found evidence that it does: ignorance and deception were less mitigating for strict liability crimes than for "mens rea" crimes. Experiments 2 (N = 413; 257 male, 154 female, 2 other; M = 31) and 3 (N = 404; 183 male, 221 female, M = 35) revealed that strict liability crimes are not treated as pure moral violations, but additionally as violations of convention. We found that for strict liability crimes, ratings of moral wrongness and punishment were influenced to a greater extent by the fact that a rule had been violated, even when harm was kept constant, mirroring the legal distinction of malum prohibitum (wrong as prohibited) versus malum in se (wrong in itself). Further, we found that rules prohibiting strict liability crimes were judged more arbitrary than corresponding rules for "mens rea" crimes, and that this judgment was related to the role of mental states. Jointly, the findings suggest a surprising correspondence between the law and laypeople's intuitive judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record

The ontogeny of intent‐based normative judgments

“…A second possibility is that the source of the moral‐conventional asymmetry lies in the differential rule‐dependency of conventional versus moral norms (as proposed by Giffin & Lombrozo, ; Turiel, ). The basic idea is this: moral norms are thought to be rule independent.…”

“…For instance, within the area of moral norms, subjects tend to focus more on the agent's intent for harm norms than for purity or disgust norms (Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2011;Young & Saxe, 2011). And for moral versus conventional norms more specifically, adults make stronger intent-based judgments for prototypical moral than for prototypical conventional norms (Giffin & Lombrozo, 2016, 2018.…”

“…From the current literature, two speculative possibilities emerge. First, as proposed in the introduction the asymmetry may be grounded in the different reactive attitudes elicited by transgressions of the two types of norms (Nichols, 2002(Nichols, , 2007 A second possibility is that the source of the moral-conventional asymmetry lies in the differential rule-dependency of conventional versus moral norms (as proposed by Giffin & Lombrozo, 2016;Turiel, 1983). The basic idea is this: moral norms are thought to be rule independent.…”

An Actor's Knowledge and Intent Are More Important in Evaluating Moral Transgressions Than Conventional Transgressions

“…Giffin and Lombrozo () found empirical support for this proposal in two forms. First, they found that when a statute prohibiting a particular act was repealed, judgments about how wrong the corresponding transgression was went down significantly more for strict liability crimes than for mens rea crimes.…”

“…The results from Giffin and Lombrozo (), combined with the developmental work on the moral/conventional distinction, generate a previously unexplored prediction: that knowledge and intent should have a greater impact on how people evaluate the “wrongness” of transgressions involving moral rules versus conventional rules, with corresponding effects for the levels of punishment deemed appropriate in each case. Put differently, the gap between how wrong it is to hit someone knowingly versus accidentally should be greater than the gap between how wrong it is to break the dress code knowingly versus accidentally.…”