Parole and the moral self: Moral change mitigates responsibility

ABSTRACT

Recent studies demonstrate a moral self effect: continuity in moral values is crucial to ascriptions of identity in and over time. Since Locke, personal identity has been referred to as a ‘forensic’ concept, meaning that it plays a role in attributions of moral responsibility. If moral values are crucial to identity over time, then perceived changes in a person’s set of values may reduce responsibility for past deeds. To test this, we examined the moral self effect in parole contexts. In this empirical article, we conducted two experiments, in which participants were significantly more likely to grant parole to agents who underwent a moral change as opposed to mere behavioral change. We conclude by discussing possible objections and implications of these philosophical results for the Lockean view of personal identity.

KEWORDS:

• moral responsibility
• personal identity
• criminal justice
• moral self
• experimental philosophy

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the contributions of our Self, Motivation and Virtue team members, Shaun Nichols and Nina Strohminger, who assisted with this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Note, again, we are not examining participants’ intuitions about numerical identity. Rather than coaching our participants on a series of philosophical theories of identity, we are letting them fill in—for themselves—an account of identity. What is relevant for our research is that our manipulation, that is, the relevant narrative changes to the vignette, are driving changes in participants’ ratings of identity and responsibility. Further work by Berniūas and Dranseika (2016), who replicated Moral Self experiments in Lithuanian—a language that has explicit words for ‘sameness’ that correspond to qualitative and numerical identity—suggest that what participants are tracking in moral-self experiments are changes in qualitative identity. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this methodical concern.

2. As mentioned in the Measures, we did not request or collect other demographic information besides self-reported gender, alongside political and religious outlooks.

3. For the results reported below, the entire population is included as removing those individuals who failed the comprehension check did not significantly alter the results.

4. Notice that anchors were reversed between our desert and parole measures, in part to mitigate response perseveration.

5. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this suggestion.

6. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this concern.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Self, Motivation, and Virtue Project, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust;John Templeton Foundation [The Self, Motivation, and Virtue Project – “Invest];

Notes on contributors

Javier Gomez-Lavin

Javier Gomez-Lavin is a Provost Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jesse Prinz

Jesse Prinz is a Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy Program at The CUNY Graduate Center.