College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Jun 10;16(6):e0252586. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0252586. eCollection 2021.
Defendants can deny they have agency, and thus responsibility, for a crime by using a defense of mental impairment. We argue that although this strategy may help defendants evade blame, it may carry longer-term social costs, as lay people's perceptions of a person's agency might determine some of the moral rights they grant them. In this registered report protocol, we seek to expand upon preliminary findings from two pilot studies to examine how and why those using the defense of mental impairment are seen as less deserving of certain rights. The proposed study uses a hypothetical vignette design, varying the type of mental impairment, type of crime, and type of sentence. Our design for the registered study improves on various aspects of our pilot studies and aims to rigorously test the reliability and credibility of our model. The findings have implications for defendants claiming reduced agency through legal defenses, as well as for the broader study of moral rights and mind perception.
被告可以通过使用精神障碍辩护来否认他们对犯罪负有代理责任。我们认为，尽管这种策略可能有助于被告逃避责任，但它可能会带来长期的社会成本，因为普通人对一个人的代理权的看法可能会决定他们赋予他们的某些道德权利。在本注册报告方案中，我们试图扩展两项初步研究的初步发现，以研究为什么和如何使用精神障碍辩护的人被认为较少应得某些权利。拟议的研究使用假设情节设计，改变精神障碍的类型、犯罪类型和判决类型。我们的注册研究设计改进了我们的初步研究的各个方面，并旨在严格测试我们模型的可靠性和可信度。研究结果对通过法律辩护声称降低代理权的被告以及更广泛的道德权利和思维感知研究具有影响。
