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The Wrongfulness Of Wrongly Interpreting Wrongfulness: Provocation Interpretational Bias And Heat Of Passion Homicide, Reid G. Fontaine
The Wrongfulness Of Wrongly Interpreting Wrongfulness: Provocation Interpretational Bias And Heat Of Passion Homicide, Reid G. Fontaine
Reid G. Fontaine
In U.S. criminal law, a defendant charged with murder can invoke the heat of passion defense, an affirmative, partial-excuse defense so that he may be instead found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter. This defense requires the defendant to demonstrate that he was significantly provoked and, as a direct result of the provocation, became extremely emotionally disturbed and committed the killing while in this uncontrolled emotional state. In this way, the law makes a partial allowance for emotional dysfunction—the wrongfulness of the homicide is mitigated when the emotionally charged reactivity restricts the actor’s capacity for rational thought and reasoned …
Disentangling The Psychology And Law Of Instrumental And Reactive Subtypes Of Aggression, Reid G. Fontaine
Disentangling The Psychology And Law Of Instrumental And Reactive Subtypes Of Aggression, Reid G. Fontaine
Reid G. Fontaine
Behavioral scientists have distinguished an instrumental (or proactive) style of aggression from a style that is reactive (or hostile). Whereas instrumental aggression is cold-blooded, deliberate, and goal driven, reactive aggression is characterized by hot blood, impulsivity, and uncontrollable rage. Scholars have pointed to the distinction between murder (committed with malice aforethought) and manslaughter (enacted in the heat of passion in response to provocation) in criminal law as a reflection of the instrumental–reactive aggression dichotomy. Recently, B. J. Bushman and C. A. Anderson (2001) argued that the instrumental–reactive aggression distinction has outlived its usefulness in psychology and pointed to inconsistencies and …