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Understanding How Grammatical Aspect Influences Legal Judgment
Andrew M Sherrill1, Anita Eerland2, Rolf A Zwaan3
1Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, United States of America.
Grammatical aspect influences legal judgments by affecting perceptions of criminal intent. Temporal dynamics, like the imperfective aspect, can lead to more perceived murder actions, impacting legal decision-making.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Linguistics
- Legal Psychology
Background:
- Grammatical aspect influences understanding of events.
- Criminal intentionality is key in legal definitions.
- Previous research links aspect to perceived intentionality.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate if grammatical aspect impacts legal judgments.
- Explore the role of aspect in criminal law.
- Examine how linguistic features affect legal decision-making.
Main Methods:
- Four experiments presented legal definitions and crime scenarios.
- Manipulated grammatical aspect of provocation and murder events.
- Participants made murder degree decisions and identified influencing factors.
Main Results:
- Grammatical aspect indirectly influences legal judgments.
- Imperfective aspect led to more perceived murder actions than perfective aspect.
- Perceived intentionality correlated positively with the number of murder actions.
Conclusions:
- Grammatical aspect can affect legal judgments through situation model construction.
- Linguistic and semantic context moderates the influence of aspect.
- Changes in aspect alter situation model features relevant to legal criteria.
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