• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.253-273
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• 2023

This study was conducted to determine how analytic-holistic thinking style, one of the cultural characteristics, affects intentionality judgment and what role the crime typicality plays in the process. To this end, the psychological mechanism of intentionality judgment was confirmed in cases where the criminal typicality was manipulated by the moral characteristics of the crime perpetrator and victim. As a result, higher the criminal typicality lead to higher intentionality judgement. In addition, it was found that people with relatively holistic thinking style (with high causality and perception of change) judge less of the perpetrator intentionality. In particular, it was confirmed that the analytic-holistic thinking style interacts with criminal typicality and affects the intentionality judgment. Specifically, people with a holistic thinking style (high causality) judged the perpetrator to have high intentionality in typical cases, but judged in a reverse way in atypical cases. It means that, holistic thinkers, compared to analytic thinkers, strongly judge intentionality based on criminal typicality considering the moral characteristics of not only the perpetrators but also the victims. Along with the significance of this study, the relationships among analytic-holistic thinking style, criminal typicality and intentionality judgment were discussed.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.25-45
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• 2020

Intentionality judgement in criminal cases is a core area of fact finding that is root of guilty and sentencing judgment on the defendant. However, the third party is not sure the intentionality because it reflects subjective aspect of agent. Thus, mechanism behind intentionality judgment is an important factor to be properly understood by the academia and the criminal justice system. However, previous studies regarding intentionality judgment models have shown inconsistent results. Mental-state models proposed foreseeability(belief) and desire of agent at the time of the offence as key factors in intentionality judgment. These factors consistent with central things on intentionality judgment in criminal law. However, key factors in moral-evaluation models are blameworthiness of agent and badness of outcome reflected on the consequent aspect of act. Recently, deep-self concordance model emerged suggesting important factors on intentionality judgment are not mental states and moral evaluations but individual's deep-self. However, these models are limited in that they do not consider the important features of criminal cases, that the consequence of the case is inevitably negative, and therefore the actor who is a party to legal punishment rarely expresses his or her mental state at the time of the act. Therefore, this study suggests that, based on the existing intentionality judgment studies and the characteristics of the criminal case, the inference about who the agent was originally will play a key role in judging the intentionality in the criminal case. This is the moral-character model. Futhermore, In this regard, this study discussed what the media and criminal justice institutions should keep in mind and the directions for future research.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.329-349
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• 2020

Confirmation bias is well known to be the cause of widespread misjudgment in the field of forensic decision-making. In this study, we examined the psychological mechanisms by which confirmation bias affects intentionality judgment in serious injury and death cases that combine the moral characteristics of the perpetrator and victim differently. As a result, participants perceived the case as a more typical criminal case when both the perpetrator and victim were bad people, and gave higher intention to perpetrators' actions in these typical crimes. In particular, it was found that people with a high degree of confirmation bias highly judge the intention of the offenders in a consistent way with the stereotype of criminal cases. However, in serious criminal cases, the moderate effect of confirmation bias has disappeared and only the effect of crime typicality has existed. Finally, we discussed implications of this study and ways to reduce bias in intentionality judgment.