Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, UK.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA.
Cognition. 2021 Dec;217:104892. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104892. Epub 2021 Sep 30.
Much work has investigated explanatory preferences for things like animals and artifacts, but how do explanation preferences manifest in everyday life? Here, we focus on the criminal justice system as a case study. In this domain, outcomes critically depend on how actors in the system (e.g., lawyers, jurors) generate and interpret explanations. We investigate lay preferences for two difference classes of information: information that appeals to opportunistic aspects of a crime (i.e., how the culprit could have committed the crime) vs. motivational aspects of that crime (i.e., the purpose for committing the crime). In two studies, we demonstrate that people prefer 'motive' accounts of crimes (analogous to a teleology preference) at different stages of the investigative process. In an additional two studies we demonstrate that these preferences are context-sensitive: namely, we find that 'motive' information tends to be more incriminating and less exculpatory. We discuss these findings in light of a broad literature on the cognitive basis of explanatory preferences; specifically, we draw analogy to preferences for teleological vs. mechanistic explanations. We also discuss implications for the criminal justice system.
许多研究都探讨了对动物和人工制品等事物的解释偏好，但解释偏好如何在日常生活中表现出来呢？在这里，我们将重点关注刑事司法系统作为一个案例研究。在这个领域，系统中的参与者（例如律师、陪审员）生成和解释解释的方式对结果有重大影响。我们研究了人们对两类不同信息的偏好：一类是吸引犯罪机会主义方面的信息（即罪犯如何实施犯罪），另一类是犯罪的动机方面的信息（即犯罪的目的）。在两项研究中，我们证明了人们在调查过程的不同阶段更喜欢犯罪的“动机”解释（类似于目的论偏好）。在另外两项研究中，我们证明了这些偏好是上下文敏感的：即，我们发现“动机”信息往往更具罪证性，而不是免责性。我们根据关于解释偏好的认知基础的广泛文献讨论了这些发现；具体来说，我们将其与目的论解释与机械论解释的偏好进行了类比。我们还讨论了这些发现对刑事司法系统的影响。
