Duress and Responsibility for Action

ABSTRACT Not all crimes require mens rea, but all serious ones do. Crudely the requirement is that the defendant be able to take responsibility for the actus reus of which he is accused. What must be implied by this is essentially that the agent retain control of his actions. It is unjust to punish actions which are outside of the agent's control since such punishment cannot deter and is, arguably, pointless.
Duress does not remove an agent's control of his actions. This does not mean that actions performed under duress should be viewed as fully intentional. For though the agent foresees and wishes for the result of his action performed under duress, it is wished for as the best option out of a range of alternatives manipulated by the one who makes the threats which constitute the duress. The agent is responsible for his choice, but not for what is available for him to choose. He has an obligation to do what is best in the circumstances and should not be blamed if that would, in other circumstances, be accounted criminal.     

COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY,SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE-TAKING,AND FUNCTIONAL PERSUASIVE SKILLS IN SECOND- TO NINTH-GRADE CHILDREN1

The assumption underlying this research is that effectiveness in communication involves social perception processes. Specifically, it was predicted that effectiveness in adapting persuasive messages to recipients would be related to the complexity of the interpersonal construct system (cognitive complexity) and to the ability to represent the perspectives of others (social perspective-taking). Fifty-eight children ranging from second through ninth grade engaged in tasks yielding scores on the three variables under consideration. Both predictions were confirmed: effectiveness in adapting persuasive communications correlated .53 with cognitive complexity and .64 with social perspective-taking.     

THE EFFECTS OF GOAL-CONTINGENT PAYMENT ON THE PERFORMANCE OF A COMPLEX TASK1

Using a highly complex, computerized decision-making task, 56 university students participated in a six-week long, repeated measures, goal-setting project, involving different payment systems. Results indicated that goal-contingent payment is superior to hourly payment in influencing performance, even though the perceived valence of payment and the actual amount paid is substantially less. Discussion pointed out the limitations of the findings, including some basic equivocality in determining why such results were obtained. Discussion then focused on the implications of the findings for future investigations.