Reasoning about causal chains: The influence of mentalising

When deciding whether to blame someone for causing a harmful outcome, it is important to take into account their intentions, and the extent to which they might have foreseen the outcome. Work with children and brain-damaged patients suggests that this ability is dependent on distinctive brain circuitry and can be impaired by damage to those areas. This project will conduct experiments to establish the general principles that people use in order to assign causality and blame to actions in a chain of events. Of particular interest will be the sensitivity of people's judgments to whether an action is deliberate, and whether the agent foresees the consequences of this action. It is anticipated that normal healthy individuals will be heavily influenced by the mental state of the person about whom they are making the judgments, even when it is inappropriate to do so. In contrast, individuals with damage to key brain areas are likely to make judgments that are relatively indiffererent to the mental state of the agent. This research will have implications for a variety of areas, including a better understanding of how judges and juries make decisions in legal situations.