Morally excused but socially excluded: Denying agency through the defense of mental impairment.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: de Vel-Palumbo M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8192116 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description: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. Three randomized between-group experiments (N = 1601) used online vignettes to examine lay perceptions of a hypothetical defendant using a defense of mental impairment (versus a guilty plea). We find that using a defense of mental impairment significantly reduces responsibility, blame, and punitiveness relative to a guilty plea, and these judgments are mediated by perceptions of reduced moral agency. However, after serving their respective sentences, those using the defense are sometimes conferred fewer rights, as reduced agency corresponds to an increase in perceived dangerousness. Our findings were found to be robust across different types of mental impairment, offences/sentences, and using both manipulated and measured agency. 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.
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Project description:BackgroundPopulation segmentation and risk stratification are important strategies for allocating resources in public health, health care and social care. Social exclusion, which is defined as the cumulation of disadvantages in social, economic, cultural and political domains, is associated with an increased risk of health problems, low agency, and as a consequence, a higher need for health and social care. The aim of this study is to test social exclusion against traditional social stratifiers to identify high-risk/high-need population segments.MethodsWe used data from 33,285 adults from the 2016 Public Health Monitor of four major cities in the Netherlands. To identify at-risk populations for cardiovascular risk, cancer, low self-rated health, anxiety and depression symptoms, and low personal control, we compared relative risks (RR) and population attributable fractions (PAF) for social exclusion, which was measured with the Social Exclusion Index for Health Surveys (SEI-HS), and four traditional social stratifiers, namely, education, income, labour market position and migration background.ResultsThe analyses showed significant associations of social exclusion with all the health indicators and personal control. Particular strong RRs were found for anxiety and depression symptoms (7.95) and low personal control (6.36), with corresponding PAFs of 42 and 35%, respectively. Social exclusion was significantly better at identifying population segments with high anxiety and depression symptoms and low personal control than were the four traditional stratifiers, while the two approaches were similar at identifying other health problems. The combination of social exclusion with a low labour market position (19.5% of the adult population) captured 67% of the prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms and 60% of the prevalence of low personal control, as well as substantial proportions of the other health indicators.ConclusionsThis study shows that the SEI-HS is a powerful tool for identifying high-risk/high-need population segments in which not only ill health is concentrated, as is the case with traditional social stratifiers, but also a high prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms and low personal control are present, in addition to an accumulation of social problems. These findings have implications for health care practice, public health and social interventions in large cities.
| S-EPMC8290568 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The use of peer intervention schemes is increasingly popular within services for offending groups and there is growing evidence of their benefit for peers delivering the interventions. The current study explores staff and peer experiences of an employment scheme for peer mentors within a community project for young people involved in offending. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with full time staff (n=4) and peer mentors employed on the scheme (n=2). Thematic analysis revealed three themes of "Opportunity and Empowerment", "Supportive Processes" and "Role Definition and Structure". The results suggest that meaningful employment opportunities, with holistic support and processes for reflection and mentalisation of self and others, contribute to the personal and professional development of ex-offenders in peer mentoring roles.
| S-EPMC6323077 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background Military personnel are at greater risk for sustaining mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussion, whether they are in a combat or garrison setting. Consequently, mTBI is a major health concern for health practitioners to understand, in order to provide timely assessment and treatment to service members (SM) who are suspected to have mTBI. Observations Providing early diagnosis and effective management of symptoms can optimize recovery and promote healthy outcomes. Understanding what resources and guidelines are available is important for those evaluating active duty SMs within the Military Health System. Conclusions This article showcases clinical tools for screening, evaluating, and diagnosing concussion used within the US Department of Defense, and provides resources for practitioners to find these clinical tools online.
| S-EPMC7535956 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We define gaze agency as the awareness of the causal effect of one's own eye movements in gaze-contingent environments, which might soon become a widespread reality with the diffusion of gaze-operated devices. Here we propose a method for measuring gaze agency based on self-monitoring propensity and sensitivity. In one task, naïf observers watched bouncing balls on a computer monitor with the goal of discovering the cause of concurrently presented beeps, which were generated in real-time by their saccades or by other events (Discovery Task). We manipulated observers' self-awareness by pre-exposing them to a condition in which beeps depended on gaze direction or by focusing their attention to their own eyes. These manipulations increased propensity to agency discovery. In a second task, which served to monitor agency sensitivity at the sensori-motor level, observers were explicitly asked to detect gaze agency (Detection Task). Both tasks turned out to be well suited to measure both increases and decreases of gaze agency. We did not find evident oculomotor correlates of agency discovery or detection. A strength of our approach is that it probes self-monitoring propensity-difficult to evaluate with traditional tasks based on bodily agency. In addition to putting a lens on this novel cognitive function, measuring gaze agency could reveal subtle self-awareness deficits in pathological conditions and during development.
| S-EPMC5094589 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSocially desirable responding is a potentially relevant issue in older adults and can be evaluated with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS). However, the eight-item MCSDS has never been specifically administered to geriatric subjects, and there is a dearth of literature on the relationship between social desirability and cognitive impairment. Also, the connection between social desirability and subjective measures of psychological well-being is a matter of controversy. This study has three main aims. First, to determine the psychometric properties of the eight-item MCSDS in geriatric outpatients without dementia (i.e. with normal cognition (NC) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI)). Second, to investigate the link between social desirability and cognitive functioning. Third, to determine the association between social desirability and the assessment of self-reported mental health.MethodsCommunity-dwelling outpatients (aged ≥ 65) were consecutively recruited and neuropsychologically tested to diagnose NC or MCI (n = 299). Social desirability was assessed with the eight-item MCSDS. Depressive and anxiety symptoms were measured with the short Geriatric Depression (GDS-s) and the State-Trait Personality Inventory Trait Anxiety (STPI-TA) scales.ResultsOn principal components analysis, the eight-item MCSDS was found to have a multidimensional structure. Of the initial three-component solution, only two subscales had acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha > 0.6): "Acceptance of responsibility" and "Integrity". The third subscale ("Kindness towards others") appeared to gauge two distinct constructs of formal (i.e. politeness) versus substantive (i.e. forgiveness) compassion. On binary logistic regression, only higher income was a significant predictor of formal compassion. Test-retest reliability was substantial to excellent (Gwet's AC2 ≥ 0.8). There were no meaningful differences in social desirability between the NC and MCI groups. Likewise, negative Spearman's correlations between social desirability and cognitive Z-scores across the whole sample were weak (rs < |0.3|) and confined to one MCSDS item. Although social desirability was an independent predictor of the STPI-TA score in multiple linear regression, it explained only a marginal amount of incremental variance in anxiety symptoms (less than 2%).ConclusionsOur results suggest that social desirability need not be a major concern when using questionnaires to assess mental health in geriatric outpatients without dementia.
| S-EPMC8442330 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Philosophers and legal scholars have long theorized about how intentionality serves as a critical input for morality and culpability, but the emerging field of experimental philosophy has revealed a puzzling asymmetry. People judge actions leading to negative consequences as being more intentional than those leading to positive ones. The implications of this asymmetry remain unclear because there is no consensus regarding the underlying mechanism. Based on converging behavioral and neural evidence, we demonstrate that there is no single underlying mechanism. Instead, two distinct mechanisms together generate the asymmetry. Emotion drives ascriptions of intentionality for negative consequences, while the consideration of statistical norms leads to the denial of intentionality for positive consequences. We employ this novel two-mechanism model to illustrate that morality can paradoxically shape judgments of intentionality. This is consequential for mens rea in legal practice and arguments in moral philosophy pertaining to terror bombing, abortion, and euthanasia among others.
| S-EPMC4669441 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Non-motor aspects in dystonia are now well recognized. The sense of agency, which refers to the experience of controlling one's own actions, has been scarcely studied in dystonia, even though its disturbances can contribute to movement disorders. Among various brain structures, the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia are involved in shaping the sense of agency. In myoclonus dystonia, resulting from a dysfunction of the motor network, an altered sense of agency may contribute to the clinical phenotype of the condition. In this study, we compared the explicit and implicit sense of agency in patients with myoclonus dystonia caused by a pathogenic variant of SGCE (DYT-SGCE) and control participants. We utilized behavioural tasks to assess the sense of agency and performed neuroimaging analyses, including structural, resting-state functional connectivity, and dynamic causal modelling, to explore the relevant brain regions involved in the sense of agency. Additionally, we examined the relationship between behavioural performance, symptom severity, and neuroimaging findings. We compared 19 patients with DYT-SGCE and 24 healthy volunteers. Our findings revealed that patients with myoclonus-dystonia exhibited a specific impairment in explicit sense of agency, particularly when implicit motor learning was involved. However, their implicit sense of agency remained intact. These patients also displayed grey-matter abnormalities in the motor cerebellum, as well as increased functional connectivity between the cerebellum and pre-supplementary motor area. Dynamic causal modelling analysis further identified reduced inhibitory effects of the cerebellum on the pre-supplementary motor area, decreased excitatory effects of the pre-supplementary motor area on the cerebellum, and increased self-inhibition within the pre-supplementary motor area. Importantly, both cerebellar grey-matter alterations and functional connectivity abnormalities between the cerebellum and pre-supplementary motor area were found to correlate with explicit sense of agency impairment. Increased self-inhibition within the pre-supplementary motor area was associated with less severe myoclonus symptoms. These findings highlight the disruption of higher-level cognitive processes in patients with myoclonus-dystonia, further expanding the spectrum of neurological and psychiatric dysfunction already identified in this disorder.
| S-EPMC11004927 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Socially assistive robots (SARs) present a promising intervention for addressing the increasing prevalence of childhood stress. This innovative technology has become increasingly common in practical implementation. However, empirical support has not kept pace with the robots' growing popularity. The present study set out to provide an empirical test of the stress-buffering capability of this technology. We examined the effects of the presence of an SAR on self-reported measures of stress in a community sample of 70 children (40 girls, 30 boys) between the ages of 7 and 10 years old. Child participants were randomly assigned to either a robot-present or a robot-absent condition during the Trier Social Stress Test for Children. Contrary to our predictions, we did not detect a stress-buffering effect of the presence of the robot. Instead, the primary analysis showed that the robot's presence led to a larger decrease in positive affect following the task. However, further analyses found no significant difference in positive affect when accounting for baseline group differences. Exploratory analyses of the nature of children's interactions with the SAR during the stressful task found that higher levels of parent-reported social anxiety were associated with greater prosocial behaviors towards the SAR, thus signifying a potential target for future interventions. Further work on SARs is needed to determine the optimal timing and robotic specifications that would maximize the potential of this developing technology to improve children's mental health care.
| S-EPMC8132490 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivesTo explore the experiences of older Peruvian adults living in urban areas of Lima under lockdown due to the National COVID-19 Emergency, this study analyzes how older adults (aged 60 and older) exercise agency while also living with the negative impacts of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and related control measures.MethodsBetween August and December 2020, our research team conducted a telephone-based, qualitative study, in which we undertook semistructured interviews with a purposive sample of low-income older adults living with chronic multimorbidities and limited resources. Forty older adults, 24 women and 16 men, with a mean age of 72 years, participated in the study. For data analysis, we employed thematic analysis with a predominantly inductive approach.ResultsOlder adults demonstrated several forms of agency to regulate emotions, maintain crucial bonds, foster social relationships, and seek economic and food security. Older adults experienced entertainment and support by caring for pets, undertaking farm work, and practicing their religious beliefs. For several participants and their families, quarantine was an opportunity to strengthen family relationships and learn new technologies. Older adults and their families reorganized themselves to assume new roles and perform activities that improved self-worth and confidence, thereby improving their well-being and mental health.DiscussionPeruvian older adults exerted agency in different ways to respond to and sustain their mental health during the COVID-19 lockdown. Policymakers should value and recognize the agency of older adults when planning future health responses.
| S-EPMC10214643 | biostudies-literature