On responsibility in science and law

Social Philosophy and Policy

Volumn 16, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 146-174

  Staddon, John ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039006145     PISSN: 02650525     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0265052500002429     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (London: Chambers, 1959). There is very little new that can be said on the topic of this essay - every idea has its antecedents, and an essay that attempted to cite them all would be impossible to write, to read -and to print. I have done my best to reference key items, taking comfort from Alfred North Whitehead's aphorism "Everything of importance has already been said by someone who did not discover it."
2. Some talk of "responsibility to oneself," but this is metaphorical, usually employed to disguise selfishness ("I'm doing it for me") as altruism ("I'm doing it for someone else").
3. J. M. Ziman, Public Knowledge: An Essay Concerning the Social Dimension of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
4. For simplicity and on the basis of historical precedent - and because most criminals are male - I use the masculine generic.
5. Karl Menninger, The Crime of Punishment (New York: Viking Press, 1968); B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).
6. Karl Menninger, The Crime of Punishment (New York: Viking Press, 1968); B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Bantam Books, 1971).
7. See Alan Dershowitz, The Abuse Excuse (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), for an entertaining description of the creative flights of the legal profession in this direction. See D. L. Horowitz, "Justification and Excuse in the Program of the Criminal Law," Law and Contemporary Problems 49 (1986): 109-26, for an account of some of the legal aspects.
8. See Alan Dershowitz, The Abuse Excuse (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), for an entertaining description of the creative flights of the legal profession in this direction. See D. L. Horowitz, "Justification and Excuse in the Program of the Criminal Law," Law and Contemporary Problems 49 (1986): 109-26, for an account of some of the legal aspects.
9. This is Skinner's term - but see note 27.
10. Note that the contrary proposition, that we are, or could be, aware when our behavior is determined, leads to endless regress: because we are not then aware that our awareness may itself be determined. Note also that failure to predict does not imply absence of determinism. The behavior of a chaotic system like the logistic map becomes less and less predictable further and further into the future, even though it is perfectly deterministic, for example.
11. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, 17.
12. Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); Michael Levin, Why Race Matters (New York: Praeger, 1997), 172 and 318 et seq.; John Staddon, "On Responsibility and Punishment," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1995, 88-94. I describe the concept of contingency in more detail below.
13. Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); Michael Levin, Why Race Matters (New York: Praeger, 1997), 172 and 318 et seq.; John Staddon, "On Responsibility and Punishment," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1995, 88-94. I describe the concept of contingency in more detail below.
14. Daniel Dennett, Elbow Room (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); Michael Levin, Why Race Matters (New York: Praeger, 1997), 172 and 318 et seq.; John Staddon, "On Responsibility and Punishment," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1995, 88-94. I describe the concept of contingency in more detail below.
15. He may feel remorse for past misdeeds, but he is responsible to no one for his actions on the desert island.
16. In fact, for many practical matters, chaos theory is not relevant. Space shuttles and geostationary satellites achieve their orbits through Laplacean calculations. The "physics of the macroworld," as it is called, is pretty much predictable. And we have no solid evidence that human behavior, at the gross level that is important for much of public policy, is unpredictable either.
17. See, for example, Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
18. In 1843, Daniel M'Naghten murdered Edward Drummond, secretary to Sir Robert Peel, the British Prime Minister who was M'Naghten's intended victim. M'Naghten contended that his mission was guided by the "voice of God." This trial yielded the M'Naghten rule: insanity is proved if the defendant was "labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong." See, for example, L. Livermore and P. Meehl, "The Virtues of M'Naghten," Minnesota Law Review 51 (1967): 789-856.
19. I term this component social, even though it represents a capacity of individuals, because it depends on the uniquely human ability to learn about consequences through signals (signs, language) rather than only from direct experience.
20. See, for example, J. E. R. Staddon, "Operant Behavior as Adaptation to Constraint," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 108 (1979): 48-67, and other papers in that issue, for many examples of the relations between psychological and economic concepts.
21. Or, at least, neoclassical economists. There are other varieties that take a broader view (e.g., Armen Alchian, Brian Arthur, Ludwig von Mises).
22. It is, of course, irrelevant to the economic argument whether support payments actually reward childbearing or simply remove a disincentive. Charles Murray has provided a pathbreaking analysis of this and related issues: see Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy: 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
23. K. Breland and M. Breland, "The Misbehavior of Organisms," American Psychologist 16 (1961): 661-64. See J. E. R. Staddon and V. Simmelhag, "The 'Superstition' Experiment: A Reexamination of Its Implications for the Principles of Adaptive Behavior," Psychological Review 78 (1971): 3-43, for a theoretical account of the phenomena described in the text.
24. K. Breland and M. Breland, "The Misbehavior of Organisms," American Psychologist 16 (1961): 661-64. See J. E. R. Staddon and V. Simmelhag, "The 'Superstition' Experiment: A Reexamination of Its Implications for the Principles of Adaptive Behavior," Psychological Review 78 (1971): 3-43, for a theoretical account of the phenomena described in the text.
25. See Werner K. Honig and J. E. R. Staddon, eds., Handbook of Operant Behavior (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), for many of these examples.
26. Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore (London: Collins, Harvill, 1987), 481.
27. Laurence Frayne, "Memoir on Norfolk Island," NSW Colonial Secretary Papers, vol. 1 (re. NSW 1799-1830), Ms. 681/1, ML, Sydney, 25-26.
28. Literature provides many vivid examples in which the threat of severe punishment fails to achieve the desired behavior. For instance, in the seventeenth-century play Surgeon of Honor, by Spanish writer Calderon de Barca, the clown-servant Coquin is given the ultimatum that he must make the King laugh - or else have all his teeth pulled out. This particular reinforcement contingency is more likely to leave Coquin toothless than the King in fits of mirth.
29. Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 499.
30. Negative reinforcement is the removal of an aversive stimulus (for example, reducing the convict's time of servitude); positive reinforcement was provided in Maconochie's scheme in the form of goods (such as food, tobacco, and clothes) that could be bought with "marks." "Time off for good behavior" is an impoverished modern version of Maconochie's "marks."
31. Ibid., 500.
32. "Control" in Skinner's misleadingly forceful terminology. The effects of contingencies are always limited by the means organisms have for adapting to them; hence, "predict" is a more accurate term than "control."
33. More precisely, such explanation is teleonomic, in C. S. Pittendrigh's sense (see Pittendrigh, "Adaptation, Natural Selection, and Behavior," in Behavior and Evolution, ed. Anne Roe and George G. Simpson [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958]).
34. There are extensive discussions of these issues in the biological literature. See, for example, J. Maynard Smith, "Optimization Theory in Evolution," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1978: 31-56; J. F. Oster and E. O. Wilson, "A Critique of Optimization Theory in Evolution," in Oster and Wilson, Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 292-315; J. E. R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); J. E. R. Staddon, "Optimality Theory and Behavior," in John Dupré, ed., The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1987), 179-98; John Staddon, Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism, and Society (London: Duckworth, 1993); and J. E. R. Staddon and J. M. Hinson, "Optimization: A Result or a Mechanism?" Science 221 (1983): 976-77.
35. There are extensive discussions of these issues in the biological literature. See, for example, J. Maynard Smith, "Optimization Theory in Evolution," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1978: 31-56; J. F. Oster and E. O. Wilson, "A Critique of Optimization Theory in Evolution," in Oster and Wilson, Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 292-315; J. E. R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); J. E. R. Staddon, "Optimality Theory and Behavior," in John Dupré, ed., The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1987), 179-98; John Staddon, Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism, and Society (London: Duckworth, 1993); and J. E. R. Staddon and J. M. Hinson, "Optimization: A Result or a Mechanism?" Science 221 (1983): 976-77.
36. There are extensive discussions of these issues in the biological literature. See, for example, J. Maynard Smith, "Optimization Theory in Evolution," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1978: 31-56; J. F. Oster and E. O. Wilson, "A Critique of Optimization Theory in Evolution," in Oster and Wilson, Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 292-315; J. E. R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); J. E. R. Staddon, "Optimality Theory and Behavior," in John Dupré, ed., The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1987), 179-98; John Staddon, Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism, and Society (London: Duckworth, 1993); and J. E. R. Staddon and J. M. Hinson, "Optimization: A Result or a Mechanism?" Science 221 (1983): 976-77.
37. There are extensive discussions of these issues in the biological literature. See, for example, J. Maynard Smith, "Optimization Theory in Evolution," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1978: 31-56; J. F. Oster and E. O. Wilson, "A Critique of Optimization Theory in Evolution," in Oster and Wilson, Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 292-315; J. E. R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); J. E. R. Staddon, "Optimality Theory and Behavior," in John Dupré, ed., The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1987), 179-98; John Staddon, Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism, and Society (London: Duckworth, 1993); and J. E. R. Staddon and J. M. Hinson, "Optimization: A Result or a Mechanism?" Science 221 (1983): 976-77.
38. There are extensive discussions of these issues in the biological literature. See, for example, J. Maynard Smith, "Optimization Theory in Evolution," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1978: 31-56; J. F. Oster and E. O. Wilson, "A Critique of Optimization Theory in Evolution," in Oster and Wilson, Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 292-315; J. E. R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); J. E. R. Staddon, "Optimality Theory and Behavior," in John Dupré, ed., The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1987), 179-98; John Staddon, Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism, and Society (London: Duckworth, 1993); and J. E. R. Staddon and J. M. Hinson, "Optimization: A Result or a Mechanism?" Science 221 (1983): 976-77.
39. There are extensive discussions of these issues in the biological literature. See, for example, J. Maynard Smith, "Optimization Theory in Evolution," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1978: 31-56; J. F. Oster and E. O. Wilson, "A Critique of Optimization Theory in Evolution," in Oster and Wilson, Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 292-315; J. E. R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); J. E. R. Staddon, "Optimality Theory and Behavior," in John Dupré, ed., The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality (Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT Press, 1987), 179-98; John Staddon, Behaviorism: Mind, Mechanism, and Society (London: Duckworth, 1993); and J. E. R. Staddon and J. M. Hinson, "Optimization: A Result or a Mechanism?" Science 221 (1983): 976-77.
40. H. A. Simon, "Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations," in Advances in Behavioral Economics, vol. 1, ed. L. Green and J. H. Kagel (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1987). (This was originally Simon's 1978 Nobel lecture.)
41. Staddon, Behaviorism.
42. These direct effects need not be immediate. Instinctive drift follows the laws of Pavlovian (rather than operant) conditioning and takes some time to develop. The point is that what I am calling "direct effects" are effects of antecedent, not consequent, events. Psychologists sometimes use the term elicited for these effects.
43. This actually gives too much credit to the economists, who were entirely uninterested in dynamics, process, etc.
44. The work of Sarnoff Mednick, who tracked the careers of criminals with and without a history of consistent punishment for their crimes, is a notable exception. For these individuals, punishment was evidently a strong deterrent; see, e.g., P. A. Brennan and S. A. Mednick, "Learning Theory Approach to the Deterrence of Criminal Recidivism," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103 (1994): 430-40.
45. John Bradshaw, Lear's Magazine, January 1993, 42.
46. Seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys was willing to be "cut of the stone" (probably a gallstone), sans anesthetic, because without the operation, death was certain. Depressives will tolerate the pain of electroconvulsive shock because the treatment, crude as it is, often provides relief. People will accept pain from a therapist if their condition is dire and they believe relief is probable.
47. A critical discussion of psychotherapy, particularly psychoanalysis, that is both knowledgeable and entertaining is experimental psychologist Stuart Sutherland's description of his own treatment for mental-health problems: Breakdown: A Personal Crisis and a Medical Dilemma (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976). A more recent critique is to be found in Terence W. Campbell, Beware the Talking Cure: Psychotherapy May Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health (Boca Raton, FL: Upton Books, 1994). It is not just capitalist insensitivity that makes the bean-counters who run health maintenance organizations reluctant to pay for mental-health benefits. The cost-benefit calculations are not favorable.
48. A critical discussion of psychotherapy, particularly psychoanalysis, that is both knowledgeable and entertaining is experimental psychologist Stuart Sutherland's description of his own treatment for mental-health problems: Breakdown: A Personal Crisis and a Medical Dilemma (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976). A more recent critique is to be found in Terence W. Campbell, Beware the Talking Cure: Psychotherapy May Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health (Boca Raton, FL: Upton Books, 1994). It is not just capitalist insensitivity that makes the bean-counters who run health maintenance organizations reluctant to pay for mental-health benefits. The cost-benefit calculations are not favorable.
49. As induction into some religious orders - a sort of psychotherapy, one might suppose -used to do.
50. This myopia seems to be characteristic of all the "caring" professions. Some readers may recall the objections of physician Dr. Marcia Angell, editor of the NeW England Journal of Medicine, to a government-funded study that proposed to compare very low doses of anti-HIV drugs with a no-dose control group, as part of an effort to find an inexpensive treatment for endemic AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa; see Marcia Angell, "Tuskegee Revisited," Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1997. Her objection: that some experimental subjects received no treatment. The fact that no subjects were injured, that the value of the "treatment" given to experimental subjects was conjectural, and that the results of the study might benefit millions, carried no weight. Her attention was entirely focused on the fact that the control subjects (under the "care" of the experimenters, in her view) received no treatment. (See John Staddon, letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal, November 11, 1997, for a contrary view.)
51. This myopia seems to be characteristic of all the "caring" professions. Some readers may recall the objections of physician Dr. Marcia Angell, editor of the NeW England Journal of Medicine, to a government-funded study that proposed to compare very low doses of anti-HIV drugs with a no-dose control group, as part of an effort to find an inexpensive treatment for endemic AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa; see Marcia Angell, "Tuskegee Revisited," Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1997. Her objection: that some experimental subjects received no treatment. The fact that no subjects were injured, that the value of the "treatment" given to experimental subjects was conjectural, and that the results of the study might benefit millions, carried no weight. Her attention was entirely focused on the fact that the control subjects (under the "care" of the experimenters, in her view) received no treatment. (See John Staddon, letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal, November 11, 1997, for a contrary view.)
52. This myopia seems to be characteristic of all the "caring" professions. Some readers may recall the objections of physician Dr. Marcia Angell, editor of the NeW England Journal of Medicine, to a government-funded study that proposed to compare very low doses of anti-HIV drugs with a no-dose control group, as part of an effort to find an inexpensive treatment for endemic AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa; see Marcia Angell, "Tuskegee Revisited," Wall Street Journal, October 28, 1997. Her objection: that some experimental subjects received no treatment. The fact that no subjects were injured, that the value of the "treatment" given to experimental subjects was conjectural, and that the results of the study might benefit millions, carried no weight. Her attention was entirely focused on the fact that the control subjects (under the "care" of the experimenters, in her view) received no treatment. (See John Staddon, letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal, November 11, 1997, for a contrary view.)
53. In the animal laboratory, the most persistent behavior is generated by shock-postponement schedules. These work by delivering brief, painful electric shocks at fixed intervals. The next shock can be postponed for a fixed time by pressing a lever or making some other operant response. Well-trained animals respond frequently enough to avoid all shocks, and may continue to do so indefinitely, long after the shock generator has been disconnected. No schedule of positive reinforcement produces such persistent effects. (It is an interesting sidelight on the nexus between policy advice and laboratory science, that the inventor of this procedure is nevertheless a passionate opponent of aversive control in public policy; see Murray Sidman, Coercion and Its Fallout [Boston, MA: Authors Cooperative, 1989]).
54. In John Aubrey's The Life of Mr. Thomas Hobbes of Malmesburie, in English Biography in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto (London: Harrap, 1951), 188.
55. The commonest form of punishment, incarceration, serves a third purpose: prevention of further offenses by the criminal during his prison time. Incarceration of repeat offenders can be very effective in reducing crime rates (see, e.g., E. H. Methvin, "Mugged by Reality," Policy Review, July 1997, 32-38). But the control here is physical, not behavioral.
56. Many legal theorists have argued for the contrary view. Most recently, Michael Moore (see Placing Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law [Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1997]) has argued persuasively and at length that "[o]f the possible functions for criminal law, only the achievement of retributive justice is its actual function" (78-79). I have no space here to contest this position. Suffice it to say that: (a) Achieving consensus on what is retributively just is likely to be even more difficult than getting agreement on what minimizes general suffering, (b) The near-universal agreement that punishment for attempted murder should be less than for successful murder strongly supports the idea that judicial punishment should have a retributive component and not be based on deterrence only. But (c) punishment certainly does deter, so it seems unwise to formulate criminal-justice policy without taking this element into account.
57. Philosophical economists have pointed out that utility cannot be compared between individuals: even President Clinton cannot really "feel my pain." Nevertheless, such comparisons are essential to any utilitarian analysis of social effects. In practice, most writers seem to assume a highly nonlinear scale that effectively rules out extreme ("cruel and unusual") punishments. John Rawls's influential A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) also argues for this view.
58. See Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1764; Stanford, CA: Academic Reprints, 1953), for what seems to be the earliest statement of this view.
59. "Why worry about whether the degree of suffering imposed on the criminal is appropriate to the crime?" some might ask. "Why not just minimize the suffering of victims?" One reason is that just retribution probably cannot be excluded as a component in criminal justice, even if it is probably not the only component. Another is that without including the suffering of the criminal in the utilitarian equation, we can raise no principled objection to a colleague of mine who, only half-joking, proposed the death penalty for littering.
60. What about the individual who is sensitive to punishment in the normal way, but is willing to disobey the law anyway because he disagrees with it? Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, but also Oliver North and Leon Trotsky, come to mind. Such individuals will naturally fail the deterrence test. Consistency implies that they should therefore be treated as irresponsible, but dangerous, like a mentally ill person. And indeed, political prisoners are often treated in this fashion, restrained indefinitely but not necessarily punished in any other way (cf. Mandela's long-term incarceration, the indefinite house-arrest of the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, etc.).
61. A skeptic might ask: "Well, if he would have heeded the angel, why did he shoot?" The obvious answer is: "Because he thought he wouldn't be caught -or, he thought that if he were caught, he could get off." The belief that a crime will go undetected or unpunished is, of course, a major "root cause" of crime.
62. Ms. Landers, now in her eighties, has been writing an advice column syndicated in hundreds of U.S. newspapers for more than forty years.
63. Menninger, The Crime of Punishment (supra note 5).
64. Of course, prohibition is one solution to this dilemma. But again, nonaddicts are punished needlessly by being deprived of a harmless (for them) enjoyment. Is the greater good served? What about personal freedom, which is also a good? Again, these questions go beyond practical science.
65. See, for example, Herb Kutchins and Stuart A. Kirk's recent exposé Making Us Crazy: DSM - The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (New York: The Free Press, 1997); and L. J. Davis, "The Encyclopedia of Insanity - A Psychiatric Handbook Lists a Madness for Everyone," Harpers Magazine, February 1997.
66. See, for example, Herb Kutchins and Stuart A. Kirk's recent exposé Making Us Crazy: DSM - The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (New York: The Free Press, 1997); and L. J. Davis, "The Encyclopedia of Insanity - A Psychiatric Handbook Lists a Madness for Everyone," Harpers Magazine, February 1997.
67. Larissa MacFarquhar, "Diagnosis: Totally Sane - The DSM Isn't Crazy in the Slightest, A Review of Kutchins and Kirk," Slate (internet magazine), November 12, 1997.
68. There is a more technical meaning for self-control, as capacity to delay gratification (i.e., impulse control), which is treated at length in an elegant experimental literature. (See, for example, George Ainslie, Picoeconomics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]; and Howard Rachlin and Leonard Green, "Commitment, Choice, and Self-Control," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 17 [1972]: 15-22.) I intend the simpler meaning - susceptibility to deterrence - here.
69. There is a more technical meaning for self-control, as capacity to delay gratification (i.e., impulse control), which is treated at length in an elegant experimental literature. (See, for example, George Ainslie, Picoeconomics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992]; and Howard Rachlin and Leonard Green, "Commitment, Choice, and Self-Control," Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior 17 [1972]: 15-22.) I intend the simpler meaning - susceptibility to deterrence - here.
70. See, for example, M. D. Rapport, "Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder," in Handbook of Psychological Treatment Protocols for Children and Adolescents, ed. V. B. Van Hasselt and Michel Hersen (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998), 65-107, for the current view on this fluid category.
71. There are, of course, many more dimensions to the problem than simply punishment and reward. The child is sensitive to all sorts of aspects that cannot easily be quantified: Is the punishment just? Is the teacher to be respected? To be believed? What is right and wrong? Will my parents support me or my teacher? How about my friends? And so forth. The effects of these aspects, which may deflect the expected effects of reward and punishment, come under the heading of the direct effects of reinforcement contingencies, discussed earlier.
72. See Murray, Losing Ground, for a thoughtful discussion of this problem.
73. "Repeated misbehavior" is a valid measure of insensitivity to discipline, of course, and those who failed this test used to be segregated in "reform schools," but this practice has fallen out of favor. I am arguing that some fraction of ADHD children probably belong in the "reform school" category.
74. The traditional self-serving male chauvinist view is, of course, the opposite.
75. David Mamet's play Oleana presents a vivid picture of this scenario.
76. See Cathy Young, "Domestic Violations," Reason, February 1998, 23-31.
77. The entertainment media have certainly picked up on this theme. Two examples: When asked by a television reporter about his simultaneous affairs with two sisters and their mother, English political charmer, aristocrat, and self-confessed rake Alan Clark recently responded: "Whatever happened to free will?" The answer seems to be that for women it has been, to some degree, suspended. And in the popular movie As Good as It Gets, the misanthrope romance novelist played by Jack Nicholson, when asked how he writes believable female characters, responds: "I think of a man. Then I take away reason and accountability." Plus ça change ...
78. Women tend to lead men in a few crimes, such as poisoning and embezzlement; otherwise, men are well ahead, particularly in violent crime.
79. The bald fact of lower crime rates by women leaves open the question of how this comes about. The Darwinian metaphor offers two possibilities that are not mutually exclusive: women are less likely to initiate crimes (i.e., show less behavioral variation of this type); or they are more responsive to punishment. The two might be distinguished by comparing the recidivism rate for men and women comparably punished for comparable crimes. (Of course, women might first-offend less often than men because they are more readily deterred by the prospect of punishment-i.e., they may exhibit more of the social aspect of responsibility.)
80. For a survey, see Malcolm Gladwell, "Crime and Science: Damaged," The New Yorker, February 24, 1997, 132-47.
81. Ibid., 134-35.
82. Ibid., 138.
83. Ibid., 134.
84. C. S. Lewis, in a prophetic essay, points out the dangers of medicalizing crime - and argues for a retributive theory of punishment; see Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," in Lewis, God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970); Lewis's essay was originally published in 20th Century: An Australian Quarterly Review 3, no. 3 (1948).
85. C. S. Lewis, in a prophetic essay, points out the dangers of medicalizing crime - and argues for a retributive theory of punishment; see Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," in Lewis, God in the Dock - Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970); Lewis's essay was originally published in 20th Century: An Australian Quarterly Review 3, no. 3 (1948).
86. Patrick O'Brien, The Mauritius Command (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 210.
87. James Q. Wilson, Moral Judgment: Does the Abuse Excuse Threaten Our Legal System? (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 36-37.
88. David L. Bazelon, "Veils, Values, and Social Responsibility," American Psychologist 37 (1982): 115-21.
89. Wilson, Moral Judgment, 37.
90. Ibid., 112.
91. Ibid., 36.
92. This view is, apparently, mistaken, since hate crimes are neither common nor increasing in frequency; see James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter, Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
93. I do not add "legal," because I assume that law is a product of science, politics, and morality, not an independent entity. But this view may not be generally held.