Moral character, motive, and the psychology of blame

Cornell Law Review

Volumn 97, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 255-304

  Nadler, Janice ^a   Mcdonnell, Mary Hunter ^a,b  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859793227     PISSN: 00108847     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (147)

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26. United States v. Moccia, 681 F.2d 61, 63 (1st Cir. 1982)).
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36. FED. R. EVID. 404(a) (allowing such evidence only when it is used in specific rebuttal to evidence of good character submitted by the defense).
37. FED. R. EVID. 404(b).
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40. FED. R. EVID. 413 (permitting admission of propensity evidence in sexual assault cases).
41. CAL. PENAL CODE § 422.55(a) (West 2009) ("'Hate crime' means a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim: (1) Disability. (2) Gender. (3) Nationality. (4) Race or ethnicity. (5) Religion. (6) Sexual orientation. (7) Association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics.").
42. Wayne Lafave & Austin W. Scott Jr., SUBSTANTIVE CRIMINAL LAW § 3.6(b), at 324 (1st ed. 1986).
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48. Mark D. Alicke, Culpable Causation, 63 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 368, .
49. Mark D. Alicke, Culpable Control and the Psychology of Blame, 126 PSYCHOL. BULL. 556, 558 (2000). It is also possible to engage in motivated nonblaming. For example, in one Gallup poll, only 18% of people in six Muslim countries believed that Arabs carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001.
50. Lawrence M. Solan, Cognitive Foundations of the Impulse to Blame, 68 BROOK. L. REV. 1003, 1021-22 (2003).
51. Mark D. Alicke, Evidential and Extra-Evidential Evaluations of Social Conduct, 9 J. SOC. BEHAV. & PERSONALITY 591, 596-601, 603-10 (1994).
52. Joel Feinberg, DOING AND DESERVING: ESSAYS IN THE THEORY OF RESPONSIBILITY 119-29 (1970) (positing arguments for this theory).
53. George P. Fletcher, RETHINKING CRIMINAL LAW § 10.3.2, at 805-06 (1978) (discussing theory that ties moral character to legal blameworthiness).
54. Nicola Lacey, STATE PUNISHMENT: POLITICAL PRINCIPLES AND COMMUNITY VALUES 68 (1988) ("[I]t is unfair to hold people responsible for actions which are out of character, but only fair to hold them so for actions in which their settled dispositions are centrally expressed.").
55. George Vuoso, Background, Responsibility, and Excuse, 96 YALE L.J. 1661, 1673 (1987)
56. Claire O. Finkelstein, Duress: A Philosophical Account of the Defense in Law, 37 ARIZ. L. REV. 251, 252-53, 271 (1995) ("[E]xcused conduct should include cases in which the agent is responsible for what she does in the non-moral sense and leave to one side cases in which the agent is responsible in the moral sense.").
57. Robert Nozick, PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATIONS 383 (1981) ("Excuses show an act is not to be attributed to a defect of character . . . .").
58. Samuel H. Pillsbury, JUDGING EVIL: RETHINKING THE LAW OF MURDER AND MANSLAUGHTER 125-26 (1998).
59. Dan M. Kahan & Martha C. Nussbaum, Two Conceptions of Emotion in Criminal Law, 96 COLUM. L. REV. 269, 368-72 (1996).
60. Cynthia Lee, MURDER AND THE REASONABLE MAN: PASSION AND FEAR IN THE CRIMINAL COURTROOM (2003) (arguing that majorityculture defendants often successfully rely on dominant social norms like masculinity and heterosexuality to successfully argue that their violence was partially or fully justified).
61. Victoria Nourse, Passion's Progress: Modern Law Reform and the Provocation Defense, 106 YALE L.J. 1331, 1332 (1997)
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66. Eric Luis Uhlmann et al., The Motivated Use of Moral Principles, 4 JUDGMENT & DECISION MAKING 476, 489 (2009).
67. Ziva Kunda, Motivated Inference: Self-Serving Generation and Evaluation of Causal Theories, 53 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 636, 646 (1987).
68. Linda Babcock et al., Biased Judgments of Fairness in Bargaining, 85 AM. ECON. REV. 1337, 1342 (1995) [hereinafter Babcock et al., Biased Judgments].
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71. Jeffrey J. Rachlinski et al., Does Unconscious Racial Bias Affect Trial Judges?, 84 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 1195 (2009) (determining that sometimes judges hold implicit racial biases that affect decision making).
72. Kurt A. Carlson & J. Edward Russo, Biased Interpretation of Evidence by Mock Jurors, 7 J. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOL.: APPLIED 91, 91-92 (2001). Similarly, the good or bad motive of the defendant can influence the extent to which mock jurors credit various pieces of evidence in the trial.
73. Keith J. Holyoak & Dan Simon, Bidirectional Reasoning in Decision Making by Constraint Satisfaction, 128 J. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOL.: GEN. 3, 11-12 (1999) (using a vignette involving a libel action by a company against an investor, the researchers demonstrated that, compared to when the investor was motivated simply by honest concern, when his speech was motivated by malicious greed, perceivers were more likely to positively assess arguments supporting liability, and to negatively assess arguments undermining liability).
74. Eileen Braman, LAW, POLITICS, & PERCEPTION: HOW POLICY PREFERENCES INFLUENCE LEGAL REASONING 4-5 (2009).
75. Glendon Schubert, THE JUDICIAL MIND: THE ATTITUDES AND IDEOLOGIES OF SUPREME COURT JUSTICES 1946-1963, at 102 (1965).
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79. Richard E. Redding & N. Dickon Reppucci, Effects of Lawyers' Socio-Political Attitudes on Their Judgments of Social Science in Legal Decision Making, 23 LAW & HUM. BEHAV. 31, 43-48 (1999) (finding that judges' personal support for the death penalty influences decisions about whether particular social science evidence is admissible under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993)).
80. Richard E. Nisbett & Timothy DeCamp Wilson, The Halo Effect: Evidence for Unconscious Alteration of Judgments, 35 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 250, 254-56 (1977).
81. Andrew J. Wistrich et al., Can Judges Ignore Inadmissible Information? The Difficulty of Deliberately Disregarding, 153 U. PA. L. REV. 1251, 1258-59 (2005). On the other hand, judges' probable cause decisions appear to be remarkably uninfluenced by the hindsight bias.
82. Jeffrey J. Rachlinski et al., Probable Cause, Probability, and Hindsight 1-5 (Vand. Pub. L. Research Paper No. 11-25, 2011), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1877125.
83. Joshua R. Furgeson et al., Do a Law's Policy Implications Affect Beliefs About Its Constitutionality? An Experimental Test, 32 LAW & HUM. BEHAV. 219, 221-26 (2008) (noting that a law professor and a federal judge independently arrived at what the study determined to be the correct ruling). 68 See id. at 221.
84. Peter H. Ditto et al., Motivated Sensitivity to Preference-Inconsistent Information, 75 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 53, 54, 64-67 (1998).
85. Dan Simon et al., The Emergence of Coherence over the Course of Decision Making, 27 J. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOL.: LEARNING, MEMORY & COGNITION 1250, 1257 (2001).
86. William M. Klein & Ziva Kunda, Maintaining Self-Serving Social Comparisons: Biased Reconstruction of One's Past Behaviors, 19 PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. BULL. 732, 737 (1993).
87. Christopher K. Hsee, Elastic Justification: How Unjustifiable Factors Influence Judgments, 66 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAV. & HUM. DECISION PROCESSES 122, 122-23, 128 (1996).
88. Ziva Kunda, The Case for Motivated Reasoning, 108 PSYCHOL. BULL. 480, 482-83 (1990).
89. Tom Pyszczynski & Jeff Greenberg, Toward an Integration of Cognitive and Motivational Perspectives on Social Inference: A Biased Hypothesis-Testing Model, 20 ADVANCES IN EXPERIMENTAL SOC. PSYCHOL. 297, 319-23 (1987).
90. Jon Hanson & David Yosifon, The Situation: An Introduction to the Situational Character, Critical Realism, Power Economics, and Deep Capture, 152 U. PA. L. REV. 129, 138 (2003).
91. Charles G. Lord et al., Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence, 37 J. PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. 2098, 2098 (1979).
92. Kenworthey Bilz & Janice Nadler, Law, Psychology, and Morality, in MORAL JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING 101-24 (Daniel M. Bartels et al. eds., 2009) (concluding that a mismatch between law and community attitudes can result in a behavioral backlash).
93. Elizabeth Mullen & Janice Nadler, Moral Spillovers: The Effect of Moral Violations on Deviant Behavior, 44 J. EXPERIMENTAL SOC. PSYCHOL. 1239, 1244-45 (2008) (discussing how perceived moral violations can cause moral spillovers, increasing subsequent deviant behavior).
94. Janice Nadler, Flouting the Law, 83 TEX. L. REV. 1399, 1426-29 (2005) (finding that perceived injustice in legislation and judicial decisions can lead to lower levels of everyday legal compliance).
95. Mitchell J. Callan et al., The Effects of Justice Motivation on Memory for Self- and Other-Relevant Events, 45 J. EXPERIMENTAL SOC. PSYCHOL. 614, 615 (2009).
96. Donald A. Dripps, Fundamental Retribution Error: Criminal Justice and the Social Psychology of Blame, 56 VAND. L. REV. 1383, 1426 (2003). Our focus in this Article is different: we examine the influence of information about character that is separate from the act itself, including reasons for acting (Experiments 1 and 2) or even information about character that is independent of the act (Experiment 3).
97. AMAZON MECHANICAL TURK, https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome(last visited Oct. 24, 2011).
98. William L. Hays, STATISTICS 376-81 (5th ed. 1994). F is a ratio that measures mean differences relative to variability within the sample.
99. Rick H. Hoyle et al., RESEARCH METHODS IN SOCIAL RELATIONS 83-84 (7th ed. 2002).
100. MODEL PENAL CODE §§ 2.02(2)(c), (d) (1985).
101. Daniel M. Oppenheimer et al., Instructional Manipulation Checks: Detecting Satisficing to Increase Statistical Power, 45 J. EXPERIMENTAL SOC. PSYCHOL. 867, 867-68 (2009). In our experiment, we asked respondents, "According to the story, to what extent did Sara Davidson realize that her dogs were not well behaved?" We then asked them to choose one of two options: "Sara was NOT really aware of this" or "Sara was aware of this.".
102. Richard I. Stein & Carol J. Nemeroff, Moral Overtones of Food: Judgments of Others Based on What They Eat, 21 PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. BULL. 480, 480-81, 489 (1995). Our manipulation check results-that Sara was seen as less moral based partly on food choices and exercise-is consistent with this evidence.
103. Adam Benforado et al., Broken Scales: Obesity and Justice in America, 53 EMORY L.J. 1645, 1777 & n.467 (2004) (quoting Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner on the proposed Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act, H.R. 554, 109th Cong. (2005), as saying, "Don't run off and file a lawsuit if you are fat . . . . Look in the mirror because you're the one to blame." (omission in original) (citing Carl Hulse, Vote in House Offers a Shield in Obesity Suits, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 11, 2004, at A1)).
104. Samuel H. Pillsbury, HOW CRIMINAL LAW WORKS: A CONCEPTUAL AND PRACTICAL GUIDE 106 (2009) (stating that a criminal defendant who "acts with awareness of a high and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur" will be criminally responsible for her actions).
105. Daniel A. Effron & Benoît Monin, Letting People Off the Hook: When do Good Deeds Excuse Transgressions?, 36 PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. BULL. 1618, 1631-33 (2010) (showing that good deeds reduce condemnation when they are in a different domain (e.g., crusading against drugs) than the subsequent transgression (e.g., committing sexual harassment)).
106. John M. Darley et al., Doing Wrong Without Creating Harm, 7 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 30, 52 (2010).
107. Lawrence M. Solan & John M. Darley, Causation, Contribution, and Legal Liability: An Empirical Study, 64 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 265, 284-95 (2001).
108. Thomas R. Shultz et al., Assignment of Moral Responsibility and Punishment, 57 CHILD DEV. 177, 182-83 (1986) (showing that children assign greater moral responsibility to acts involving intention than to negligence or accident).
109. James J. Tomkovicz, The Endurance of the Felony-Murder Rule: A Study of the Forces that Shape Our Criminal Law, 51 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1429, 1435 & nn.22-24 (1994).
110. Guyora Binder, The Culpability of Felony Murder, 83 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 965, 1032-46 (2008) (proposing an expressive theory of felony-murder culpability that punishes values expressed through dangerous actions).
111. Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130, 131 (1878).
112. Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 604-07, 614-16 (1994) (requiring a specific mens rea, despite the lack of such a requirement in the relevant statute, for a defendant who claimed that he was unaware a firearm he possessed was actually a machine gun).
113. Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 194-96, 203-04 (1991) (requiring knowledge that conduct was illegal, even though the statute included a willfulness requirement, for a commercial airline pilot who evaded taxes after "learning" that wages were not taxable income from lectures by members of a tax protest group).
114. Joseph E. Kennedy, The Story of Staples v. U.S. and the Innocent Machine Gun Owner: The Good, the Bad, and the Dangerous, (Univ. N.C. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1596222, 2010), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract= 1596222. For a more historical discussion.
115. Dan M. Kahan, Two Conceptions of Emotion in Criminal Law: An Essay Inspired by Bill Stuntz, in THE POLITICAL HEART OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE: ESSAYS ON THEMES OF WILLIAM J. STUNTZ (Michael Klarman et al. eds., forthcoming 2012).
116. State v. Lapage, 57 N.H. 245, 289 (1876).
117. Norman Krivosha et al., Relevancy: The Necessary Element in Using Evidence of Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Bad Acts to Convict, 60 NEB. L. REV. 657, 664 (1981) (tracing the roots of the common-law ban on character evidence to the 1810 English case Rex v. Cole).
118. Julius Stone, The Rule of Exclusion of Similar Fact Evidence: England, 46 HARV. L. REV. 954, 959, 960-61 (1933)).
119. Kenneth S. Broun, MCCORMICK ON EVIDENCE 311 (6th ed. 2006) (defining character evidence as "evidence offered solely to prove a person acted in conformity with a trait of character on a given occasion").
120. Sherry F. Colb, "Whodunit" Versus "What was Done": When to Admit Character Evidence in Criminal Cases, 79 N.C. L. REV. 939, 941 (2001) ("The rule prohibits the introduction of character evidence to prove that an individual acted in conformity with his character on the occasion in question.").
121. Julius Stone, The Rule of Exclusion of Similar Fact Evidence: America, 51 HARV. L. REV. 988, 989 (1938).
122. Thomas J. Reed, Reading Gaol Revisited: Admission of Uncharged Misconduct Evidence in Sex Offender Cases, 21 AM. J. CRIM. L. 127, 159 (1993) (discussing state law exceptions to character-evidence rules in sexual-assault and child-molestation cases).
123. Tom Lininger, Evidentiary Issues in Federal Prosecutions of Violence Against Women, 36 IND. L. REV. 687, 700-02 & n.44 (2003).
124. Roger C. Park, Character at the Crossroads, 49 HASTINGS L.J. 717, 754-55 (1998) (noting that in the context of limiting instructions about character evidence, it is hard for juries to be "consistent in resisting common sense").
125. Peter Tillers, What is Wrong with Character Evidence?, 49 HASTINGS L.J. 781, 810, 825 (1998).
126. Samuel R. Gross, Make-Believe: The Rules Excluding Evidence of Character and Liability Insurance, 49 HASTINGS L.J. 843, 845-46 (1998).
127. Kenworthey Bilz, We Don't Want to Hear It: Psychology, Literature and the Narrative Model of Judging, 2010 U. ILL. L. REV. 429, 430, 473-75 ("[L]egitimate criminal condemnation demands complete, rich, narrative trials.").
128. Jim M. Perdue, Winning with Stories: Using the Narrative to Persuade in Trials, Speeches & Lectures, 69 TEX. B.J. 984, 990 (2006) (arguing that "[a] trial story is all about character").
129. Richard A. Posner, Legal Narratology, 64 U. CHI. L. REV. 737, 738 (1997).
130. LAW'S STORIES: NARRATIVE AND RHETORIC IN THE LAW (Peter Brooks & Paul Gewirtz eds., 1996) (characterizing trials as competitions between stories, where the "[p]laintiff and defendant in a trial each tell a story . . . and the jury chooses the story that it likes better")).
131. Welch v. State, 235 So. 2d 906, 907 (Ala. 1970) ("Mankind might still be in Eden, but for Adam's biting an apple.").
132. Mark F. Grady, Proximate Cause Decoded, 50 UCLA L. REV. 293, 294 (2002) ("[M]any believe that proximate cause is basically incoherent, that its cases cannot be predicted, and even that they illustrate some fundamental disorder of the common law.").
133. Paul H. Robinson CRIMINAL LAW: CASE STUDIES & CONTROVERSIES 260 (2d ed. 2008).
134. MODEL PENAL CODE § 2.03(2)(b), (3)(b) (1985) (alterations in original).
135. People v. Kibbe, 321 N.E.2d 773, 776-77 (N.Y. 1974).
136. People v. Acosta, 284 Cal. Rptr. 117, 120, 129 (Ct. App. 1991).
137. Velazquez v. State, 561 So. 2d 347, 354 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1990).
138. Jennifer K. Robbennolt, Outcome Severity and Judgments of "Responsibility": A Meta- Analytic Review, 30 J. APPLIED SOC. PSYCHOL. 2575, 2579-81 (2000).
139. Mark D. Alicke et al., A Posteriori Adjustment of A Priori Decision Criteria, 12 SOC. COGNITION 281, 282, 303-06 (1994).
140. Loran F. Nordgren & Mary-Hunter Morris McDonnell, The Scope-Severity Paradox: Why Doing More Harm Is Judged to Be Less Harmful, 2 SOC. PSYCHOL. & PERSONALITY SCI. 97, 97 (2011) (finding an inverse correlation between harm to victims and punishment in cases where there is more than one victim and the victims are not readily identifiable).
141. D. Chimaeze Ugwuegbu & Clyde Hendrick, Personal Causality and Attribution of Responsibility, 2 SOC. BEHAV. & PERSONALITY 76, 84 (1974). Relatedly, observers are sometimes more likely to blame the defendant depending on the victim's physical attractiveness, race, or gender.
142. Edward L. Glaeser & Bruce Sacerdote, Sentencing in Homicide Cases and the Role of Vengeance, 32 J. LEGAL STUD. 363, 364-65 (2003).
143. Norbert L. Kerr, Beautiful and Blameless: Effects of Victim Attractiveness and Responsibility on Mock Jurors' Verdicts, 4 PERSONALITY & SOC. PSYCHOL. BULL. 479, 479 (1978).
144. Bertram F. Malle, Intentionality, Morality, and Their Relationship in Human Judgment, 6 J. COGNITION & CULTURE 87, 102-05 (2006) (finding that when people evaluate a negative action, they are especially sensitive to issues about the intentionality of that action).
145. Carissa Byrne Hessick, Why Are Only Bad Acts Good Sentencing Factors?, 88 B.U. L. REV. 1109, 1137-61 (2008) (exploring reasons why criminal sentencing takes bad but not good acts into account).
146. Jonathan Haidt & Selin Kesebir, Morality, in 2 HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 797, 803 (Susan T. Fiske et al. eds., 5th ed. 2010). There is some evidence that analytic circuitry of the brain (right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) is involved when people make certain kinds of judgments about criminal responsibility; at the same time, punishmentmagnitude judgments involve emotional circuitry (right amygdala).
147. Joshua W. Buckholtz et al., The Neural Correlates of Third-Party Punishment, 60 NEURON 930, 934 (2008).