Getting Even or Getting Equal? Retributive Desires and Transitional Justice

This article examines the effect that different policy interventions of transitional justice have on the desires of the victims of human rights violations for retribution. The retributive desires assessed in this article are conceptualized as individual, collective, and abstract demands for the imposition of a commensurate degree of suffering upon the offender. We suggest a plausible way of reducing victims' retributive desires. Instead of "getting even" in relation to the suffering, victims and perpetrators may "get equal" in relation to their respective statuses, which were affected by political crimes. The article hypothesizes that the three classes of transitional justice: (1) reparation that empowers victims by financial compensation, truth telling, and social acknowledgment; (2) retribution that inflicts punishment upon perpetrators; and (3) reconciliation that renews civic relationship between victims and perpetrators through personal contact, apology, and forgiveness; each contributes to restoring equality between victims and perpetrators, and in so doing decreases the desires that victims have for retribution. In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a survey of former political prisoners in the Czech Republic. Results from the regression analysis reveal that financial compensation, social acknowledgement, punishment, and forgiveness are likely to reduce victims' retributive desires.     

Perspective taking and opinions about forms of reparation for victims of historical harm

The authors investigated the effects of perspective taking on opinions about reparations for victims of historical harm. In two studies, they showed that when non-Indigenous Australians took an Indigenous Australian perspective, this increased perceived entitlement to, and decreased anger toward, monetary compensation. Moreover, perceived entitlement mediated the relationship between anger about monetary compensation and perspective taking. Study 2 demonstrated the mutual influence of emotions and perceived entitlement. In particular, self-image shame rather than group-based guilt or anger predicted support for reparation when an Indigenous Australian perspective was adopted. The results suggest that taking the perspective of people who have experienced harm from one's own group can bolster a commitment to positive social change in relation to a pressing social issue.     

Chinese children's evaluations of white lies: weighing the consequences for recipients

This research examined how Chinese children make moral judgments about lie telling and truth telling when facing a “white lie” or “politeness” dilemma in which telling a blunt truth is likely to hurt the feelings of another. We examined the possibility that the judgments of participants (7-11 years of age, N = 240) would differ as a function of the social context in which communication takes place. The expected social consequences were manipulated systematically in two studies. In Study 1, participants rated truth telling more negatively and rated lie telling more positively in a public situation where telling a blunt truth is especially likely to have negative social consequences. In Study 2, participants rated truth telling more positively and rated lie telling more negatively in a situation where accurate information is likely to be helpful for the recipient to achieve future success. Both studies showed that with increased age, children’s evaluations became significantly influenced by the social context, with the strongest effects being seen among the 11-year-olds. These results suggest that Chinese children learn to take anticipated social consequences into account when making moral judgments about the appropriateness of telling a blunt truth versus lying to protect the feelings of another.     

Reparations in Democratic Transitions

This article proposes a normative theory of reparations for political violence from the standpoint of contemporary critical theory debates on recognition and redistribution. I argue that any satisfactory reparations theory should aspire to ‘status parity’, a term coined by Nancy Fraser, and should include symbolic and material components for both individuals and groups. The essay argues that reparations can promote a number of worthy goals, including the reaffirmation of moral respect and dignity of victims.     

The impact of magnitude of harm and perceived difficulty of making reparations on group‐based guilt and reparation towards victims of historical harm

The present research investigates how reading stories about past mistreatment of children who had been in institutional care affects support for reparations, perceived difficulty of reparations and group‐based guilt were investigated in two experiments. In Study 1 we showed that, when the stories increased in perceived harm, so did the perceived difficulty of making reparations whereas group‐based guilt decreased. Furthermore, both perceived difficulty of making reparations and group‐based guilt predicted support for reparation. It was suggested that these findings were due to a natural confound between the severity of harm and the difficulty of reparations. Study 2 included a direct manipulation of perceived difficulty that was intended to weaken or strengthen the ability to make reparations. This study demonstrated stronger group‐based guilt when reparations were potentially possible and not when they are impossible. Moreover, support for reparations varied as a function of perceived difficulty of reparations and group‐based guilt mediated that relationship. The research has two key implications. First, advocates of reparations as a mechanism for reconciliation and community healing need to consider the degree to which reparations are perceived to be possible and consider ways of addressing those perceptions. Second, the research provides an experimental demonstration to the power of stories about experience to bolster support for social change. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lie,truth, lie: the role of task switching in a deception context

A cornerstone of the task switching literature is the finding that task performance is typically slower and more error-prone when the task switches than when it repeats. So far, deception research has largely ignored that such cognitive switch costs should also emerge when switching between truth telling and lying, and may affect the cognitive cost of lying as reflected in higher prefrontal brain activity and slower and less accurate responding compared to truth telling. To get a grasp on the relative size of the switch costs associated with lying and truth telling, the current study had participants perform a reaction time-based deception task, in which they alternated between lying and telling the truth to yes/no questions that were related to activities performed in the lab (Experiment 1) or neutral autobiographical facts (Experiment 2). In both experiments, the error and reaction time switch costs were found to be equally large for switching from truth telling to lying and from lying to truth telling. This symmetry in switch costs can be explained from the hypothesis that lying requires a first step of truth telling, and demonstrates that task switching does not contribute to the cognitive cost of lying when the repetition/switch ratio is balanced. Theoretical and methodological implications are considered.     

Accepting Forgiveness

Forgiving wrongdoers who neither apologized, nor sought to make amends in any way, is controversial. Even defenders of the practice agree with critics that such “unilateral” forgiveness involves giving up on the meaningful redress that victims otherwise justifiably demand from their wrongdoers: apology, reparations, repentance, and so on. Against that view, I argue here that when a victim of wrongdoing sets out to grant forgiveness to her offender, and he in turn accepts her forgiveness, he thereby serves some important ends of apology and reparation, no matter what else he did—or did not do—by way of repair. Although much overlooked, the simple act of accepting forgiveness joins victim and offender in affirming and acting upon some important shared background assumptions, including many of those expressed in standard apologies. Perhaps more surprisingly, I argue that accepting forgiveness also fulfills the duty to counteract any concrete harm wrongfully inflicted. The argument helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of forgiveness, including that a victim can change her offender’s normative status, making him a less fitting target of the resentment, indignation and shunning of others, and even his own guilt pangs, simply by forgiving him.

     

Telling adults about one's plight as a victim of bullying: Student- and context-related factors predicting disclosure

We examined student- and context-related factors related to whether bullied students tell adults about their plight at school or at home. The sample included 1,266 students in primary (Grades 4–6) and lower secondary (Grades 8–9) schools, who had answered an online questionnaire at two measurement points about 5 months apart and were identified as victims of bullying on the basis of the latter. Only 55.4% of the bullied students had told their situation to someone, and much fewer had told an adult. Telling an adult at home was more common (34.0%) than telling a teacher (20.6%) or some other adult at school (12.7%). In a longitudinal structural equation model (SEM), factors related to increased likelihood of telling an adult were female gender, lower grade level, the chronicity of victimization, perceived negative teacher attitude towards bullying (teacher not tolerating bullying), and perceived peer support for victims (classmates’ tendency to defend students who are victimized).     

Truth telling and terminal illness: A Jewish view

The focus of this paper is a Jewish view of truth telling and the dilemma of revealing to a terminal patient his imminent demise. Directions are given to physicians, medical personnel, and children of the patient on how to deal with truth telling. Attitudes reflected in Jewish thought suggest that the welfare of the patient is primary, and any information that will upset his psychological state is clearly prohibited. Physicians may not reveal to patients their terminal state. Children and family are obligated to withhold information of a patient's terminal state, even if the latter demands to be told. Hope is seen as a central feature of truth telling even during the period of confession. This view contrasts with the liberal attitude of truth telling in some Western countries, where it is the patient's right to know of his imminent demise.     

A tarnished silver lining: victim suffering and support for reparations

Groups around the world are seeking reparations for historical harms. In three studies, the authors examined if people are more inclined to support a historical victim group if the group continues to suffer today because of an earlier harm. In Study 1, participants perceived greater victim suffering when the harm was recent and the degree of perceived suffering positively related to victim group support. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors manipulated continued victim suffering and the feasibility of material reparations. Both variables affected victim group support, but experienced sympathy and injustice judgments mediated their effects. Suffering victims elicited more compassion when reparations seemed feasible but were treated the same as nonsuffering victims when reparations seemed unfeasible. Suffering victims were also treated equally irrespective of feasibility of reparations, whereas nonsuffering victims were treated significantly less favorably when reparations seemed feasible, versus unfeasible.     

Descombes' Critique of Cognitivism

Truth‐telling is a project that is both gripping and problematic for Rousseau, as he is both captured by an ideal of telling as complete, undistorted discernment, documentation and communication, and also haunted by the fear that telling can never be this innocent. For Rousseau, as for Kant, telling does not leave the told untouched; rather, telling gives us a type of contact with objects that is marked and mediated by the process of telling itself, and hence the possibility of immediately grasping objects through telling is forever lost to us. The drive to capture things in themselves, which originates, according to Kant, in a formal principle of reason, shows up in Rousseau's writings as a nostalgia that governs and animates inquiry. I will read Rousseau, and the traumas of truth‐telling he articulates, as important pretexts for Kant's critical epistemology. Rousseau discloses tensions that infect his truth‐telling practices. Kant seeks to neutralize these tensions, not by dissolving them, but rather by translating them into the terms of transcendental philosophy and thus showing how they can be defused and rendered harmless in their empirical form, so as to secure the possibility of proper truth‐telling.     

The Ethics of Stats

This essay argues for the importance and interest, within and beyond theological ethics, of the ethical questions faced by professionals who are called on to be producers of statistics (herein “stats”) for management purposes. Truth‐telling, in the context of demands for stats, cannot be evaluated at the level of the individual statement or utterance, nor through an ethical framework primarily focused on the correspondence between thought and speech. Reflection on stats production forces us to treat truth‐telling as contextual and political, and to engage with the idea that the capacity to tell the truth is learned or acquired in communities, societies and institutions. I develop this engagement through a rereading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on “telling the truth” and Michel Foucault on parrhēsia, identifying and exploring the relationship between the responsible use of stats and the “cynical” protest against them.     

How you lie affects what you remember

We investigated how telling different types of lies may impact memory. Participants studied pictures of objects, and later lied and told the truth about these and new objects once or multiple times by describing them or by denying they had seen them. Forty-eight hours later, participants were tested on their source memory. Results revealed that participants had good memory for having falsely described a never-seen object, but relatively poor memory for having falsely denied seeing a studied object. These results suggest that telling certain types of lies may make a person more likely to forget having lied. In addition, repeated truthful denials of having seen a picture paradoxically increased false memories for having seen it. Thus, telling the truth does not always prevent the possibility of memory distortion.     

Academic Activism Revisited

Academics are, or ought to be, engaged in an impartial search for the truth. Many academics also are, but ought not to be, engaged in political activism. I defend a moral duty for academics to refrain from such activism. Ben Jones’ article in this journal rejects such a duty. This article responds to his objections, thereby more carefully formulating when and why political activism is morally problematic, and what burdens it may imply.     

THE RESCUE DEFENCE OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Many political philosophers today think of justice as fundamentally about fairness, while those who defend capital punishment typically hold that justice is fundamentally about desert. In this paper I show that justice as fairness calls for capital punishment because the continued existence of murderers increases unfairness between themselves and their victims, increasing the harm to murdered persons. Rescuing murdered persons from increasing harm is prima facie morally required, and so capital punishment is a prima facie duty of society and sentencing judges. 1     

Truth Incorporated

What is the cognitive value of the concept of truth? What epistemic difference does the concept of truth make to those who grasp it? This paper employs a new perspective for thinking about the concept of truth and recent debates concerning it, organized around the question of the cognitive value of the concept of truth. The paper aims to defend a substantively correct and dialectically optimal account of the cognitive value of the concept of truth. This perspective is employed in understanding the critical discussion around what Hartry Field (2001a) has called “the incorporation model” for extending a deflationary view of truth to foreign sentences. Field's original intentions in discussing the incorporation model were to defend the deflationary view from some counterintuitive consequences concerning the understanding of truth attributions to foreign sentences. However, more recently, philosophers unencumbered by deflationary commitments have taken over the incorporation model for their own inflationary purposes. In particular, and in my terms, these philosophers can be understood as making what I argue is the ultimately too radical suggestion that the cognitive value of the concept of truth is to allow the incorporation not only of the linguistically foreign, but also of the conceptually alien. I clarify this dialectic en route to explaining and arguing for the cognitive inflationary view, according to which the cognitive value of the concept of truth is is to make possible the proprietary kind and quality of knowledge allowed by reflective clarity over the concepts and thoughts that one already has.     

Correspondence truth and scientific realism

I argue that one good reason for Scientific Realists to be interested in correspondence theories is the hope they offer us of being able to state and defend realistic theses in the face of well-known difficulties about modern physics: such theses as, that our theories are approximately true, or that they will tend to approach the truth. I go on to claim that this hope is unlikely to be fulfilled. I suggest that Realism can still survive in the face of these difficulties, as a claim about the kind of theories we want to aim for. I relate this conception of Realism to various contemporary discussions, both by realists and antirealists.     

Reasoning from Suppositions

Two experiments investigated inferences based on suppositions. In Experiment 1, the subjects decided whether suppositions about individuals' veracity were consistent with their assertions—for example, whether the supposition “Ann is telling the truth and Beth is telling a lie”, is consistent with the premises: “Ann asserts: I am telling the truth and Beth is telling the truth. Beth asserts: Ann is telling the truth”. It showed that these inferences are more difficult than ones based on factual premises: “Ann asserts: I live in Dublin and Beth lives in Dublin”. There was no difference between problems about truthtellers and liars, who always told the truth or always lied, and normals, who sometimes told the truth and sometimes lied. In Experiment 2, the subjects made inferences about factual matters set in three contexts: a truth-inducing context in which friends confided their personality characteristics, a lie-inducing context in which business rivals advertised their products, and a neutral context in which computers printed their program characteristics. Given the supposition that the individuals were lying, it was more difficult to make inferences in a truth-inducing context than in the other two contexts. We discuss the implications of our results for everyday reasoning from suppositions, and for theories of reasoning based on models or inference rules.     

Promising to tell the truth makes 8‐ to 16‐year‐olds more honest

Techniques commonly used to increase truth‐telling in most North American jurisdiction courts include requiring witnesses to discuss the morality of truth‐ and lie‐telling and to promise to tell the truth prior to testifying. While promising to tell the truth successfully decreases younger children's lie‐telling, the influence of discussing the morality of honesty and promising to tell the truth on adolescents' statements has remained unexamined. In Experiment 1, 108 youngsters, aged 8–16 years, were left alone in the room and asked not to peek at the answers to a test. The majority of participants peeked at the test answers and then lied about their transgression. More importantly, participants were eight times more likely to change their response from a lie to the truth after promising to tell the truth. Experiment 2 confirmed that the results of Experiment 1 were not solely due to repeated questioning or the moral discussion of truth‐ and lie‐telling. These results suggest that, while promising to tell the truth influences the truth‐telling behaviors of adolescents, a moral discussion of truth and lies does not. Legal implications are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The ease of lying

Brain imaging studies suggest that truth telling constitutes the default of the human brain and that lying involves intentional suppression of the predominant truth response. By manipulating the truth proportion in the Sheffield lie test, we investigated whether the dominance of the truth response is malleable. Results showed that frequent truth telling made lying more difficult, and that frequent lying made lying easier. These results implicate that (1) the accuracy of lie detection tests may be improved by increasing the dominance of the truth response and that (2) habitual lying makes the lie response more dominant.