Blanton, Richard L.

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University of Kentucky

Kentucky Law JournalVolume 45 | Issue 2 Article 71956Responsibility: A Psychologist's Point of ViewRichard L. BlantonUniversity of KentuckyFollow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kljPart of the Law and Psychology CommonsRight click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefitsyou.This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in Kentucky Law Journalby an authorized editor of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact UKnowledge@lsv.uky.edu.Recommended CitationBlanton, Richard L. (1956) "Responsibility: A Psychologist's Point of View," Kentucky Law Journal: Vol. 45 : Iss. 2 , Article 7.Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/klj/vol45/iss2/7Responsibility: A Psychologist'sPoint of ViewBy RICHARD L. BLANTON*Knowledge, Choice and ActionThe word "responsibility" refers to the ability to accept theconsequences of a choice, and a person is said to be "responsible"if he can be shown to have such an ability as a result of capacityand/or experience.A person, in order to survive, must choose between alternativesfor acting. Under certain circumstances he is required to acceptthe consequences of his choice and is held accountable to societyfor errors. Under other circumstances he is accountable only tohimself. Society decides, on the basis of its own experience, forwhich choices its members must be held accountable. The subjectmatter of Law consists of descriptions of these choice situations aswell as the prescribed alternatives which are io be punished orrewarded.For many centuries, society has accepted and held to be validassumption that a human act is either "free" or "compelled". Theargument raised by Professor De Boer has been the subject of muchdiscussion in the Law, Theology, the Humanities, the Social Sci-ences and Philosophy. It is asserted that if an act is determined bynatural law, choice cannot exist; hence the person is not free butis compelled to act as he does and cannot be held responsible.Society's representatives in the law have sought for "tests" bywhich a person may be shown to have acted under "natural law",i.e. compulsion on the one hand or "free will" on the other. Sucha search is not only fruitless, it is based on a misunderstanding ofhuman freedom and natural law.An act is a result of the capacity, knowledge and motivationof the acting person. Given no changes in these, an act could not* M.A., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychology, University of Ken-tucky.MENTAL RESPONSIBILITYhave been different than it was. Freedom exists to the degree thata person is permitted to act in pursuit of his own values. He isheld responsible for the effects that such acts may have on hissociety. That his actions are caused by factors of which he may beignorant does not exempt him from punishment, for the purposeof punishment is to motivate him to learn. To the notion thatcausality implies compulsion it can be replied that science doesnot define cause in this sense. Causality refers to the regularity ofobserved events. The key word here is "observed". Causation isa matter of knowledge, not a matter of force. The idea that causeconsists of the application of force is probably derived from ourown experience of the mechanical aspects of our own body move-ments and has been supported by the eighteenth-century convic-tion that all natural phenomena can be reduced to the principlesof classical mechanics. This belief is at variance with the principlesof modern science.On the other hand, the experience of choice is probably due tothe inability of a person at the moment of action to know all theprocesses which lead to the act itself. The complex of values,needs and motives is projected against a world of external fact,and an act is a result of inadequate knowledge of ourselves as wellas incomplete knowledge of the world. Where no knowledgeexists, that is, where the alternatives appear equivalent because oflack of knowledge of the state of the world and the self, a responseis made at random. We say that we "take a chance". In a sense,we can call this a completely free choice, but such a use of theterm is paradoxical since the choice is not made in the usual sortof effort to bring about a correspondence between the externalevents and our own values and needs. The consequences of arandom choice are "accidental" and the person is usually not heldresponsible for choices of this sort if he can be shown to have anacceptable motive for having made it.In any case, freedom depends upon the ability to choose andhence cannot depend upon ignorance or chance. It must, there-fore, depend upon knowledge. A man who must act withoutknowledge cannot predict or control the consequences of hisactions and is, in this sense, a slave. It is for this reason thateducation is perhaps the most vital function in a democraticsociety.286 KENTucKy LAw JouENALNow there are two types of situations in which persons acceptthe consequences of acting without knowledge. The first of theseincludes a large number of the behaviors called "games". In gam-bling it is the rule that everyone must be ignorant to some speci-fied degree. He may, for example, know anything except the orderof the cards in the deck. In this case, possession of information isunethical. It is ruled that he must make a choice based on ignor-ance and assume the responsibility for it which is stipulated by therules of the game. Games are interesting psychological phe-nomena, though not of primary concern to us here. It may besaid, however, that many offenders against society, particularlyjuveniles, appear not to distinguish well between "real" and"game" situations. It is felt that one who is "playing" should notbe punished for error.The second situation in which persons accept the consequencesof acting without knowledge is called a learning situation. Here,one acts in a state of ignorance in order to obtain information onwhich to base future choices. Responsibility for error is then ac-cepted only as the price of knowledge, and society makes specialexemptions on the basis of agreed upon rules in such cases. "Givethe fellow a chance," we say, "he's got to learn." While it is com-monly said that "Ignorance is no excuse," what we actually meanis that a person is held accountable first for failure to learn the pat-terns of behavior acceptable to society. This is his primary re-sponsibility.If, then, the ability to choose depends upon knowledge, re-sponsibility also depends upon knowledge. The question of whatknowledge depends upon is a psychological question and can beanswered scientifically, although the detailed answer to this ques-tion will require many more years of study. Put very simply,knowledge depends upon the capacity to learn, the opportunity tolearn, and the need to learn. All of these are interrelated in com-plex ways not now well understood. But let us examine thembriefly and attempt to make a general statement of our problemin the light of this examination.Society cannot provide the capacity to learn, it can only at-tempt to remedy or compensate for organic defects. For such con-ditions as deafness, blindness and epilepsy, the situation is veryhopeful. For mental deficiency, we can do little except determineMVIENTAL REsPONsBIrrYthe nature and extent of the deficit and plan for such compensa-tions as appear feasible at present. The problem of insanity is anespecially difficult one and there are many thorny issues. If mentalillness is a kind of deficiency, i.e. an organic illness, we would befaced with the task of helping the patient to compensate for a lackof a capacity we cannot as yet identify. Many mental illnesses,however, are almost certainly due to distortion in the areas of needand opportunity to learn, and the prevention and cure of suchmental illnesses must await further knowledge of these factors ifit is to be effective.The opportunity to learn, on the other hand, is a matter forwhich society has assumed primary responsibility. Its own con-tinuation depends upon provision of such opportunity to all itsmembers. Much of the responsibility is assigned to the family,since experience has shown that critical aspects of need-formationand information are best provided in the home. Other institutionshave been established to supplement the work of the family. Weknow, however, that unless a person is permitted to meet situationsleading to reward and punishment he cannot acquire the need andthe knowledge to choose appropriately. When mental illness ordelinquency result from poverty of experience they are oppor-tunity problems. It is because of poverty of experience that weexempt children from responsibility for antisocial acts.The need to learn is a condition of life itself and arises fromthe fundamental instability of living substances. Society requiresthat people learn to get along with each other, since otherwise itcannot survive. Since rewards and punishments follow social acts,getting along with others soon appears as a separate need which isfounded on the basic physical needs but which soon becomes evenstronger than some of the physical needs in the determination ofeveryday behavior. Systems of "manners", for example, lend con-sistency and predictibility to social behavior and a measure ofsecurity to social interaction. Society can provide the need tolearn the special skills and knowledge on which socially meaning-ful choices depend. It does this by rewarding and punishing theacts of its members. Social responsibility is therefore an outgrowthof appropriate reward and punishment.Unfortunately, people have usually assumed that needs ormotives are sui generis, that they arise outside the context of socialKENTUcKY LAW JounNALlearning. It is said that we cannot take the responsibility for insur-ing that a person will love good and reject evil. This belief is notonly demonstrably false, but in fact society has always placed theresponsibility for such teaching on the family. Our problem is todiscover in what respects the family may fail in this teaching andsupplement it with other institutional facilities.Learning, Reward, and PunishmentFrom the psychologist's point of view, the question is not"What is the person's responsibility for his acts?" He is alwayscompletely responsible to the extent that his behavior leads tosocially relevant consequences. This does not mean, however, thatsociety can make a priori decisions about the punishments or re-wards which should follow any particular act. Society, too, makesa choice and hence has the responsibility to determine for eachcase what punishments or rewards will lead to acceptable behaviorin the future. For many centuries social law has sought to achievethe inevitability of natural law. The greater its similarity to animplacable "Fate", the greater its power is thought to be. Yet weare all aware that punishment for punishment's sake is not onlyuseless but harmful. If a punishment results in no change of be-havior, then society is paying too high a price for useless educa-tional methods. The pleasure of vengeance and the satisfaction ofplaying the role of "Fate" are not worth the cost.In recent years, society and its legal agents have taken a dif-ferent approach to the problem of mental illness. We have, in-deed, gone so far in the opposite direction as to fail often to ad-minister appropriate patterns of reward and punishment for ac-complishing behavioral changes in such persons. In dealing withcrime, however, we remain on the defensive. We reject vengeanceas unchristian and lustful, as an act of weakness rather thanstrength. And we argue that punishment is a deterrent to crime,saying that crime can be prevented only if society interposes ex-ternal obstacles in the path of the delinquent person. At the sametime, we all know that behavior is finally determined by processeswithin the individual and that external forces can change behavioronly if corresponding changes take place within the individualhimself. We make the law an object of fear, and this probablyresults in greater conformity in some instances. But the purposeMENTAL RESPONSIBILrTYis distorted by the misuse of the means. As Tagore says, "Theclumsiness of power spoils the key and uses the pick-axe."In short, unless a person lacks the capacity to learn, the prob-lem of responsibility in mental disease cannot be separated fromthe problem of responsibility in general. Where mental illnessis a result of failure to learn, our responsibility is to teach and touse any rewards and punishments necessary to accomplish thatobjective which our values stipulate. It has long been knownthat many mental patients acquire the motivation to recover frombeing deprived of their freedom and confined to a hospital. Isthis, in every case, the most effective punishment? What othersshould we employ? Patients also improve as a result of the interestand concern shown by others for their welfare. Is this the mosteffective reward? What others should we employ? And what,given the utility of a reward or punishment, is the best means foradministering it? We need research on these problems. We needto study the rewarding and punishing aspects of the hospital en-vironment and their relationships to improvement of patient be-havior. We need more fundamental information about the proc-esses by which motives and habits are acquired and changed inreal-life situations.Mental patients and their relatives are usually gratified whenthe patient is labelled "sick" since this absolves them of guilt.This attitude does much harm to treatment programs, since byimplication the person is also absolved of responsibility for furtherlearning. Medical science has learned that even in physical illness,much of the responsibility for recovery must remain with thepatient if he is to be restored to fully adequate functioning. Themental patient must accept the responsibility to learn as the priceof healthy living.Similarly, the criminal or delinquent person must accept theresponsibility to learn as the price of social acceptance, and anyrewards and punishments necessary to accomplish his habilitationshould be sought out and employed. If, in a given case, imprison-ment is likely to be effective, by all means let us imprison him. Iflove and care are likely to be most effective, let us use them. Butlet us never forget that a means and a purpose should be relatedby fact and not by feeling alone.KENTUCKY LAW JoURNALInsanity and crime are, as Maudsley has said, "Neither acci-dents nor anomalies in the universe, but come by law and testifyto causality." If this is true, and if it is true that the principal pur-pose of society is to achieve maximum realization of the values itchooses to hold, then the problem of responsibility as historicallyposed is a pseudo-problem. The question is not whether a personshould be exempted from punishment. The question is rather,"By what means can we teach him what he needs to know in orderto behave acceptably?"In summary, it seems to me that responsibility depends uponthe ability to choose appropriately which in turn depends uponknowledge. Knowledge depends upon the need, the capacity andthe opportunity to learn. Society, acting through the family andother institutions, has assumed the responsibility for providingthese or correcting flaws in them. Our greatest need is for knowl-edge as to how to make this process more effective. The assertionthat a person's acts are determined by his past or by his physicalmake-up is probably true. But this does not mean that he shouldnot be punished for error. Such a person should be punished orrewarded to that extent and by those means which are necessaryand sufficient to bring about acceptable and observable changes inhis behavior through learning.The law is conservative and not prone to experiment. This iswise, for the knowledge of the past is usually.better than no knowl-edge at all. But governments should support the search for knowl-edge which will make their operations more effective, for a demo-cratic society must be oriented to the future as well as to the past.KENTUCKY LAW JOURNALVol. XLV Winter, 1956-57 Number 2EDITORIAL BOARD1956-1957J. LELAND BREWSTER IIEditor-in-ChiefLUTHER P. HOUSEAssociate EditorWmLiAm C. BRAFFORDNote EditorsBEAucHAMP E. BRoGANHENR R. SNYDERJESSE S. HocGWILLIAM E. BIviNComments EditorWAYNE J. CARROLLNote EditorsJoHN D. MILLERLESLIE W. MoMs IIPAUL OBERSTFaculty EditorFaculty of the College of Lawex officio(MRS.) MARTHA GALLAGHER, SecretaryThe Kentucky Law Journal is published in Fall, Winter, Spring and Summerby the College of Law, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. It is enteredas second-class matter October 12, 1927, at the post office, at Lexington, Kentucky,under the act of March 3, 1879.Communications of either an editorial or a business nature should be ad-dressed to Kentucky Law Journal, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky.The purpose of the Kentucky Law Journal is to publish contributions of inter-est and value to the legal profession, but the views expressed in such contributionsdo not necessarily represent those of the Journal.The Journal is a charter member of the Southern Law Review conference.Subscription price: $4:00 per year $2.00 per number

Responsibility: A Psychologist\u27s Point of View

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Responsibility: A Psychologist\u27s Point of View

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