The interplay between social and scientific accounts of intergroup difference

By Cliodhna O’Connor

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The investigation of intergroup difference is a ubiquitous dimension of biological and behavioural research involving human subjects. Understanding almost any aspect of human variation involves the comparison of a group of people, who are defined by some common attribute, with a reference group which does not share that attribute. This is an inescapable corollary of applying the scientific method to study human minds, bodies and societies. However, this scientific practice can have unanticipated – and undesirable – social consequences. As my own research has shown in the contexts of psychiatric diagnosis (O’Connor, Kadianaki, Maunder, & McNicholas, in press), gender (O’Connor & Joffe, 2014) and sexual orientation (O’Connor, 2017), scientific accounts of intergroup differences can often function to reinforce long-established stereotypes, exaggerate the homogeneity of social groups, and impose overly sharp divisions between social categories.

Without disputing the scientific legitimacy of intergroup comparisons in research, it is important to acknowledge that the definitions and distinctions that determine which populations are compared are given by culture, not by nature. For one thing, there are relatively few discrete categories underlying human variability ‘in the wild:’ even for variables seen as the most obvious examples of natural kinds, such as sex, the boundaries between categories are much fuzzier than is typically acknowledged (Fausto-Sterling, 2000). The pragmatic demands of experimental design encourage scientists to carve the social world at joints that it may not naturally possess. Secondly, the choice of intergroup comparison is not value-neutral: the priorities of governments, industries, funding agencies, universities and individual scientists dictate which comparisons are deemed sufficiently interesting or important to investigate. Therefore, even within the scientific sphere, how questions are asked and answered is influenced by a priori understandings of social categories. These understandings are absorbed into all stages of the scientific process, from research design right through the collection, analysis and interpretation of data.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Scientific and cultural understandings become even more enmeshed as scientific findings migrate from the laboratory into wider society. As they circulate through the public sphere, scientific accounts of intergroup difference may come to not merely describe, but actively shape the social divisions they seek to explain. This process is perhaps best captured by Hacking’s (1995) notion of a ‘looping effect,’ which characterises the understandings held by individuals, science and society as locked in a perpetual cycle of mutual influence. Hacking’s key insight is that the constitution of a scientific category, which is then applied to human persons, creates a new ‘kind’ or ‘type’ of person. Psychiatric diagnosis is a paradigmatic example. For instance, the emergence of the scientific category of ‘autism’ in the 20th century changed how a large swathe of persons defined themselves and were perceived by others. As a category becomes widely known, the general public begins to observe the behavioural patterns of individuals classified under this label, and this influences the direction of ongoing research on the topic – for example, Silberman (2015) describes the critical role of parental activism in challenging the conventional conflation of autism with low intelligence. The scientific definition may change again, with a corresponding evolution of the attached social realities. The decision to remove the diagnosis of ‘Asperger’s Disorder’ from DSM-5 was a case in point, leaving some feeling robbed of a label with which they had deeply identified (Singh, 2011).

Gender is another example where the interpenetration of scientific and cultural understandings is highly evident. The science of sex has long been plagued by prejudice: throughout modern history, biological explanations of sex differences have been a stock tool for those seeking to justify women’s exclusion from political, occupational and financial realms. This continues today: as Cordelia Fine (2017) demonstrates in her recent book, much contemporary sex difference research is premised on recurrent conceptual and methodological biases. These include the presumption of a simplistic gender binary in research design and interpretation, the tendency to over-emphasise small between-sex differences while ignoring large within-sex variation, and the unwarranted favouring of deterministic genetic explanations for brain differences over the equally plausible proposition that plastic brains are shaped by systematically different social experiences. These problems are heightened when scientific information enters the communication channels that comprise today’s public sphere, as Helene Joffe and I showed in an analysis of social representations of one high-profile study of neurological sex differences (O’Connor & Joffe, 2014). By tracking how the scientific information evolved as it moved from the scientific journal, via a press release, into mass and social media, we demonstrated that irrelevant gender stereotypes were progressively hitched onto the study as it was reported and discussed. The rhetorical authority of ‘science’ was harnessed to justify these stereotypes’ factual truth and normative legitimacy.

Image courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

The theories and techniques of social psychology are crucial resources in understanding the processes and outcomes of these interactions between science and society. For instance, there is a rich literature enlightening how group identity commitments drive interpretations of scientific information: people selectively attend to and elaborate information in ways that support their own group’s worldview (Joffe, 1999; Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman, 2011; Morton, Haslam, Postmes, & Ryan, 2006). Research on psychological essentialism specifically investigates the effects of attributing group differences to biology: for example, while genetic explanations of mental illness may reduce blame, they simultaneously increase fear, social distance, perceived dangerousness, and patronising treatment (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011). Theories of stereotype formation can illuminate the networks of beliefs into which scientific accounts of intergroup difference may be drawn: for instance, media accounts of sex difference research often comply with a form of ‘complementary stereotyping,’ where the derogation of women’s intellectual abilities is made more palatable by emphasising their superior performance in other, less valued domains (e.g. ‘emotional intelligence’). Packaging stereotypes in a way that makes them sound reasoned and reasonable increases their effectiveness at inculcating acceptance of inequalities (Jost & Kay, 2005). Scientific information about group difference can therefore be used to make social inequalities seem justified and inevitable.

For scientists engaged in public communication of their research, familiarity with these social psychological dynamics is invaluable in anticipating the likely societal effects their research may have. Understanding these processes can help scientists predict how their work might be interpreted by others in undesirable ways, as well as inform critical reflection on how their own biases may affect the research questions they select and pursue. A socially responsible scientist should be aware of the feedback-loops between science and society and unafraid to scrutinise the ways their research influences, and is influenced by, the cultural, political and ideological environments in which it is situated.

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Dr. Cliodhna O'Connor is a social psychologist and Assistant Professor in Psychology in University College Dublin, Ireland. Her research investigates how people engage with scientific information and the implications this has for social attitudes, self-concept and common-sense beliefs. She currently holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, which supports a mixed-methods research programme exploring the phenomenon of diagnostic transitions in youth mental healthcare. 

References

Dar-Nimrod, I., & Heine, S. J. (2011). Genetic essentialism: On the deceptive determinism of DNA. Psychological Bulletin, 137(5), 800–818.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Fine, C. (2017). Testosterone Rex: Unmasking the Myths of our Gendered Minds. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Hacking, I. (1995). The looping effects of human kinds. In D. Sperber, D. Premack, & A. J. Premack (Eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate (pp. 351–383). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Joffe, H. (1999). Risk and ‘the Other.’ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jost, J. T., & Kay, A. C. (2005). Exposure to benevolent sexism and complementary gender stereotypes: consequences for specific and diffuse forms of system justification. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 88(3), 498–509.

Kahan, D. M., Jenkins-Smith, H., & Braman, D. (2011). Cultural cognition of scientific consensus. Journal of Risk Research, 14(2), 147–174.

Morton, T. A., Haslam, S. A., Postmes, T., & Ryan, M. K. (2006). We value what values us: The appeal of identity-affirming science. Political Psychology, 27(6), 823–838.

O’Connor, C. (2017). ‘Appeals to nature’ in marriage equality debates: A content analysis of newspaper and social media discourse. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(3), 493–514.

O’Connor, C., & Joffe, H. (2014). Gender on the brain: A case study of science communication in the new media environment. PLoS ONE, 9(10), e110830.

O’Connor, C., Kadianaki, I., Maunder, K., & McNicholas, F. (in press). How does psychiatric diagnosis affect young people’s self-concept and social identity? A systematic review and synthesis of the qualitative literature. Social Science & Medicine.

Silberman, S. (2015). Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. New York, NY: Avery.

Singh, J. S. (2011). The vanishing diagnosis of Asperger’s Disorder. In P. J. McGann & D. J. Hutson (eds.), Sociology of Diagnosis (pp. 235–257) Bingley: Emerald.

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O’Connor, C. (2018). The interplay between social and scientific accounts of intergroup difference. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/07/the-interplay-between-social-and.html

The Effects of Neuroscientific Framing on Legal Decision Making

By Corey H. Allen

Corey Allen is a graduate research fellow in the Georgia State University Neuroscience and Philosophy departments with a concentration in Neuroethics. He is a member of the Cooperation, Conflict, and Cognition Lab, and his research investigates (1) the ethical and legal implications of neuropredictive models of high-risk behavior, (2) the role of consciousness in attributions of moral agency, and (3) the impact of neurobiological explanations in legal and moral decision making.

More than ever, an extraordinary amount of up-and-coming companies are jumping to attach the prefix “neuro” to their products. In many cases, this ”neurobabble” is inadequate and irrelevant, serving only to take advantage of the public’s preconceptions about the term. This hasty neuroscientific framing doesn’t stop with marketing but instead creeps into public and legal discourse surrounding action and responsibility. This leads to the question: does the framing of an issue as “neuroscientific” change the perceptions of and reactions to that issue? This question, especially in the realm of legal decision making, is the focus of ongoing research by Eyal Aharoni, Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby, Gidon Felsen, Karina Vold, and myself, with the support of Duke University and the John Templeton Foundation. With backgrounds varying from psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, to neuroethics, our team employs a multi-disciplinary approach to probe the effects of neuroscientific framing on public perceptions of legal evidence as well as the ethical issues surrounding such effects.

The Power of “Neuro”

When it comes to public perception, neuroscientific information seems to play a stronger role in confusion than in clarification. For example, the inclusion of irrelevant neuroscientific information (such as complex-sounding brain areas) clouds a person’s ability to tell good explanations from bad explanations as well as increases people’s satisfaction with these bad explanations (1). Similarly, the inclusion of brain images alongside scientific argumentation increases perceptions of scientific reasoning above and beyond different graphical representations of the same data; though, it is worth noting that these results have been contested (2 & 3). Regardless, neuroscientific explanations seem to possess some sort of “seductive allure” that other modes of explanations lack (1). But, this seductive allure does not stop at our perceptions; it also extends to how people behave and react to these perceptions. Please also see previous posts on this topic here.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Typically, research on the behavioral implications of neuroscientific discourse focuses on an actor’s moral responsibility and individual control of his/her future actions. It is conjectured that these topics of interest are due to laypeople’s proclivity to make (potentially faulty) assumptions regarding what caused the act and how much control the actor had in that process (4). In other words, painting a picture in which the actor’s brain activity arises prior to “them” realizing it leads to assumptions that his/her actions are nothing more than middleman in a larger causal chain and are, therefore, events that “they” have no control over. For example, Vohs & Schooler (2008) found that when participants were exposed to a deterministic message (i.e. an argument that behavior is a direct result of genetic and environmental factors, and thus, unchangeable), they were more likely to cheat on a task, presumably because they saw themselves as unable to do otherwise (5). Furthermore, neuroscientific discourse can affect how individuals treat others. When exposed to neuroscientific information (whether it be an entire semester of an introductory course in neuroscience or just a magazine blurb), people are less likely to be overly punitive when deciding how to respond to an individual’s bad actions (6). Seemingly, due to assumptions about causality, we are more likely to see others’ actions as being caused by their brain instead of being caused by “them,” leading to the intuition that they are now less morally responsible for their bad action and therefore less deserving of punishment. 

Neuroscience and Criminal Sentencing

One realm in which this research is especially pertinent is in criminal sentencing in the courtroom. Given that the usage of neuroscientific explanations and evidence in criminal sentencing has been steadily rising, the question regarding the seductive allure of neuroscience in the courtroom has already been posed frequently in the literature (7, 8, & 9, & 10). In particular, there is a focus on what is commonly referred to as “the double-edged sword” of neuroscientific evidence; that is, neuroscientific evidence has both the ability to mitigate or aggravate punishments depending on how the argument is framed. For example, explaining away a criminal action by positing that it was the offender’s brain that made him/her do it has the potential to decrease punitive sentences based on that crime. On the other hand, by making the argument that an offender is “unable to do otherwise” because of their brain, a picture is painted of an offender who cannot control his/her actions. Offenders who are unable to control their actions pose a larger future danger to society. This increased future danger has the potential to bring with it intuitions that the offender needs to be incapacitated for a longer time in order to protect society. 

Image courtesy of Flickr.

While most experiments aiming to find the effects of neuroscientific explanations in courtroom settings have found modestly mitigating (if any) effects on punishment (8, & 9, & 10), two studies in particular, by Aspinwall (2012) and Fuss (2015), show reasons to think that the “double-edged sword” of neuroscientific evidence is more than just theoretical (11 & 12). These studies posed the question of the effect of neuroscientific explanations on judges, American and German, respectively. Both studies found similar mitigating effects – the inclusion of a biological defense in the trial decreased attributions of legal responsibility and, furthermore, decreased the punishment recommended. But, on the other hand, both studies also found potentially aggravating effects. Aspinwall, for example, found that as mitigating post-hoc rationalizations (such as decreases in perceived moral culpability) increased with the introduction of a biological defense, so did mentions of balancing this effect with similar aggravating rationalizations (taking into account the offender’s future danger to society). Comparably, Fuss also reported an increase in judges’ recommendations for involuntary civil commitment. Though these results are certainly indicative and supportive of the notion of the “double-edged sword,” these findings rely heavily on open-ended question analyses instead of on direct punitive and incapacitative measures. 

Our Research on the Double-Edge Effect 

Because of the mixed results in the literature, we wondered whether or not failures to detect the “double-edge” effect were due to how punishment was being measured. A key assumption of the “double-edge” effect seems to be that mitigation and aggravation are driven by very different motives— one concerned with the moral responsibility of the offender (mitigation) and the other more concerned with the future consequences of letting a potentially dangerous offender back into society (aggravation). Overall, we were worried that prison sentences confound these motives and mask the “double-edge” effect, so we aimed to test it by including multiple measurements. In this research, we utilized an experimental vignette method, in which participants read a case summary regarding an offender with an impulse control disorder who was found guilty of sexual assault. They were then asked to assume the role of the judge overseeing the case and recommend a prison sentence for the offender. Participants were also given the opportunity to recommend that the offender be involuntarily hospitalized instead of or in addition to their prison sentence. This measure served as a way to incapacitate the offender (due to his/her dangerousness) without necessarily doing so for punitive reasons. 

Within these experimental vignettes, we manipulated two main aspects of the offender’s story: 1) whether the offender’s impulse control disorder was caused by behavioral or neurobiological factors, and 2) whether this disorder was found to be treatable or untreatable. Alongside these manipulations, we also included a control condition in which the offender was completely healthy. In line with the notion of the double edged sword, we hypothesized that neurobiological evidence, compared to behavioral evidence, would serve to reduce recommended prison sentences, and inversely, increase recommended time in involuntary hospitalization. This is exactly what we found: neuroscientific evidence decreased prison sentences (Figure 1) and increased involuntary hospitalization (Figure 2). We also found that both prison sentence recommendations (Figure 1) and involuntary hospitalizations (Figure 2) were greater when the disorder was described as untreatable as opposed to treatable.

Figure 1. Neurobiological evidence mitigated sentences relative to behavioral evidence and no evidence. Similarly, treatable conditions evoked significantly shorter sentences than untreatable conditions.

Figure 2. Neurobiological evidence increased involuntary hospitalization terms relative to behavioral evidence and no evidence. Inversely, treatable conditions evoked significantly shorter involuntary hospitalization terms than untreatable conditions.

What do our results suggest? 

While neuroscientific evidence certainly has the capacity to be mitigating in criminal sentencing, as previous studies have shown, that may not be the whole story. Our research suggests that when people are given the option of involuntary hospitalization in addition to prison time, they are then able to manage the offender’s future dangerousness without resorting to the “one-stop-shop” of retributive prison sentencing. In other words, when prison time is the only option available, our pluralistic motivations, and thus the potentially mitigating influence of neuroscientific evidence, may be obscured. Only when individuals can choose among sentencing options with distinct functions may this sensitivity to neuroscientific framing arise. 

Our results imply that sentencing decisions may be susceptible to how the evidence is framed. If this framing effect does turn out to be both prominent and replicable, then many ethical and legal issues arise with it. Though it is not my intention to address these issues here in the depth they warrant, it is worth mentioning two in particular: 1) more empirical research is needed to bolster the theoretical claims regarding ethical and legal issues of neuroscientific evidence in the courtroom, and 2) this type of research can play an important role in educating judges about the influences of framing, as well as address misconceptions about what neuroscience can and cannot tell us with respect to questions of causation and control. 

By applying the experimental method to the theoretical claims that have arisen in the popular media regarding the potential effects of neuroscientific evidence and framing within the courtroom, this line of research serves to substantiate, dispel, and scrutinize these claims. In doing so, both the accuracy and the precision of these concerns increase, leaving the public, future researchers, and legal scholars better suited to address certain susceptibilities within the sentencing process. For example, if this framing effect is truly only present when punitive motives are separated out and represented as different sentencing options, then concerns of framing might be ill-placed when the judge is only able to consider time in prison. On the other hand, if a judge is considering civil commitment, involuntary hospitalization, or supervised probation, these framing effects become incredibly important and pertinent. In this case, the framing of the offender’s offense can potentially alter not only his or her quality of life, but also his/her access to resources necessary for successful rehabilitation. 

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Further down the line, this research can also educate the judges making these decisions about how certain framing effects might alter their recommended sentences. It is important to note that this education doesn’t stop solely with the effect of framing of sentencing but also includes more fine grained effects on notions of moral and legal responsibility, causation, and culpability. Though the jury is out on how this education would curb these certain framing susceptibilities, an increased recognition of, and interest in, these effects have the potential to inform the creation of additional safeguards within the legal system– safeguards designed to better protect the inherent tension between offender rights and public safety. 

References 

(1) Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470–477. 

(2) McCabe, D. P., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning. Cognition, 107(1), 343–352. 

(3) Farah, M. J.; Hook, C. J. The Seductive Allure of “Seductive Allure.” Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2013, 8, 88–90. 

(4) Nahmias, E. (2011). Intuitions about Free Will, Determinism, and Bypassing. The Oxford Handbook on Free Will 2nd Edition, 555–575.  

(5) Vohs, K. D., & Schooler, J. W. (2008). The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1), 49–54. 

(6) Shariff, A. F., Greene, J. D., Karremans, J. C., Luguri, J. B., Clark, C. J., Schooler, J. W., ... & Vohs, K. D. (2014). Free will and punishment: A mechanistic view of human nature reduces retribution. Psychological science, 25(8), 1563-1570. 

(7) Farahany, N. A. (2016). Neuroscience and behavioral genetics in US criminal law: an empirical analysis. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 2(3), 485-509. 

(8) Greene, E., & B. S. Cahill (2011). Effects of Neuroimaging Evidence on Mock Juror Decision Making. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 30(3), 280-96. 

(9) Saks, M. J., Schweitzer, N. J., Aharoni, E., & Kiehl, K. A. (2014). The Impact of Neuroimages in the Sentencing Phase of Capital trials. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 11(1), 105-131. 

(10) Schweitzer, N. J., & Saks, M. J. (2011). Neuroimage evidence and the insanity defense. Behavioral sciences & the law, 29(4), 592-607. 

(11) Aspinwall, L. G., Teneille R. B., & J. Tabery (2012). The Double-Edged Sword: Does Biomechanism Increase or Decrease Judges' Sentencing of Psychopaths? Science, 337(6096), 846-849. 

(12) Fuss, J., Dressing, H., & Briken, P. (2015). Neurogenetic evidence in the courtroom: a randomised controlled trial with German judges. Journal of medical genetics, jmedgenet-2015.

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Allen, C. (2018). The Effects of Neuroscientific Framing on Legal Decision Making. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/04/the-effects-of-neuroscientific-framing.html

Summary of what you (may have) missed at last week’s International Neuroethics Society meeting!

Image courtesy of Gillian Hue.

The AJOBN Editorial team recently returned from the 11th annual International Neuroethics Society (INS) meeting, which took place on November 9-10th in Washington, DC. The theme for the meeting was Honoring our History, Forging our Future, and it brought together scientists, philosophers, professionals, and scholars from over 10 countries to both summarize the first 15 years of the neuroethics field and to discuss our prospective future. The day and a half conference included plenary lectures, a public forum, panel discussions, and a poster session, and addressed topics ranging from the development of lying in children to the neuroethical considerations that accompany the use of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

In case you didn't get the chance to attend the conference this year, here is a brief summary of what you missed (a full program recap can be found here).

Image courtesy of Gillian Hue.

The conference opened on Thursday afternoon with a plenary lecture delivered by Remi Quirion, the Chief Scientist of Quebec, who discussed the history of neuroethics and where he thinks the field will go moving forward. This was followed by a riveting panel discussion entitled, “Neuroscience, Communication, and Public Engagement,” which was moderated by chief executive officer of AAAS, Alan Leshner, and featured Joseph J. Fins from Weill Cornell Medical College, Tali Sharot from University College London, and Ed Yong from The Atlantic. This panel focused on the interaction between scientists and the media and incorporated discussion of the Goldwater Rule and science journalism. This panel was followed by the annual Ambassador Session (this year’s session was entitled, “Reflecting on our International Roots and Planning our Collaborative Futures”), where liaisons from neuroethics research efforts around the world summarized what progress in neuroethics looks like in each country. Perspectives from Korea (Jinni Jeong), The Kavli Foundation (Caroline Montojo), the US BRAIN Initiative (Khara Ramos), and the EU Human Brain Project (Arleen Salles) were represented. The session was co-moderated by Emory Center for Ethic Neuorethics Program Director Karen Rommelfanger who spoke about her work creating the Global Neuroethics Summit. The day closed out with a public program entitled, “To Tell the Truth!” This session included talks by Elizabeth Loftus from the University of California, Irvine, who spoke about the validity of our memories; Victoria Talwar from McGill University, who spoke about the development of lying in children; and Charles Dike from Yale University School of Medicine, who spoke about pathological lying.

Friday morning began with a plenary lecture from Arthur Caplan of NYU School of Medicine that was a call to action for the field of neuroethics—Caplan emphasized that we should spend time discussing and engaging the neuroethical dilemmas happening now, instead of speculating about predicted dystopian futures. The morning continued with a panel entitled, “The Brain in Context,” which featured Moriah Thomason of Wayne State University, Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, and Herve Chneiweiss of Ecole des Neurosciences de Paris. This panel emphasized the multidimensional factors that affect neurodevelopment. This was followed by a panel on addiction policymaking entitled, “Legal Responsibility, Agency, and Addiction Neuroethics: Reconciling Frameworks for Policymaking.” This panel featured Rachel Wurzman from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School; Jessica Birkett from the University of Melbourne; and Stephen J. Morse from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, who debated the claim that “addiction is a brain disease,” and discussed where to place responsibility and how to punish and/or treat addiction.

Image courtesy of Gillian Hue.

After a lunch break, the afternoon continued with two concurrent sessions on neurotechnology (“Ethics of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology” with Frederic Gilbert from University of Washington, Merlin Bettlinger from Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin, and Anna Wexler from the University of Pennsylvania) and law (“Neuroscience of the Law” with Andreas Kuersten from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Nicholas Sinclair-House from the University of Sussex, and Jason Kerkmans from the consulting firm, MINDSET). The conference closed out with two plenary lectures given by Karola Kreitmair from Stanford University and Patricia Churchland from the University of California, San Diego. Kreitmair enumerated seven criteria that she feels should be applied in the development of ethical consumer neurotechnologies, while Churchland discussed how neuroethics has helped us understand our social lives and moral behavior.

If you missed this year's annual INS conference, don't fret. INS is already planning its next conference in San Diego in November 2018—check out neuroethicssociety.org for updates on the meeting program and registration details. We will also be posting more in-depth summaries of some of the sessions from this year’s conference in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

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Hoffman, C. (2017). Summary of what you (may have) missed at last week’s International Neuroethics Society meeting! The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2017/11/summary-of-what-you-may-have-missed-at.html

Neuroscience in the Courtroom: An Attempt for Clarity

*Editor’s note: You can catch a lengthier discussion of this topic at our Jan 29th session of Neuroscience and Neuroethics in the News.



When people think about functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and the courtroom, many often think of mind reading or colorful images of psychopathic brains. Portable fMRI machines capable of reading our personal thoughts pop into our heads and arouse a fear that one day a neuroscientist could reasonably discern our deepest secrets through a brain scan. Despite recent scholarship that suggests a world filled with covert fMRI lie detection devices is far away (if ever attainable), I think further attention should be paid to how people think about neuroscience and interpret scientific information that draws on brain-laden language, particularly in the courtroom (Farah, Hutchinson, Phelps, & Wagner, 2014). This topic is of special interest to me as it is the focus of my undergraduate research thesis. I also think it should be relevant to neuroscientists, ethicists, and journalists as well because the way in which people interpret and understand aspects of the brain and human behavior is perhaps a consequence of how such information is portrayed to the public.

Photo from Ali, Liftshitz, & Raz, 2014

The seductive allure of neuroscience information has captivated many researchers as brain imaging and neural explanations begin to seep into the legal realm and fascinate the media (Jones, Wagner, Faigman, & Raichle, 2013). This idea—the seductive allure hypothesis—refers to the notion that people find neurological justifications of behavior to be a marker of a sound explanation for an action or tendency, regardless of the quality of the information (Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, & Gray, 2008; McCabe & Castel, 2008). Understanding whether people are captivated by neural information has largely shifted into a debate about the persuasive and informative value of brain images (Farah & Hook, 2013).  Some of this research has involved measuring the impact of brain images on sentencing verdicts and punishment determinations in legal cases (Schweitzer, Saks, Murphy, Roskies, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Gaudet, 2011). The results of these studies are largely mixed, with many more research findings not corroborating the seductive allure hypothesis (Roskies, Schweitzer, & Saks, 2013), suggesting that neurological explanations are particularly compelling. Should this lead us to believe that the debate surrounding the persuasiveness of brain images is over?



I think not. In an effort to infuse some clarity in the neuro-seduction debate, I will discuss two overarching questions that I find particularly relevant to this ongoing discussion: first, what precisely does it mean to be neuroscientific? And, second, assuming that neuroscience has some potential to unduly sway people, is it also reasonable to assume neuroscience has equal pull amongst people with differing beliefs about the mind, the brain, neuroscience, and psychology generally? I will attempt to address both of these issues below.

   

Prefrontal cortex, impulse control, brain images—oh my!

 Lots of explanations, pictures, graphs, journal articles, and books could constitute neuroscience. Take, for instance, an fMRI brain image of a person with psychopathy: to a general audience, such a picture could convey lots of different types of information, ideas, or concepts about the mind and the brain. To some, an fMRI image may suggest that a particular pathology is “real” or that someone’s deviant or anti-social behavior is “hardwired” in the brain. Now, take a lawyer merely describing adolescents as particularly impulsive bunch because of their delayed development of the pre-frontal cortex. This latter form of argumentation may also convey very similar ideas to certain people, as is the case in the former example, even though it does not rely on an image per se.

   

In studies examining the persuasive power of brain images, we need to be careful not to conflate the power of an explanation and the power of an image. In other words, if we are going to argue that neuroscience is unduly persuasive, we need a better conceptualization of what it means to be neuroscientific, and I think neuroscience is much more than just fMRI images. The distinction between explanation and image is of particular relevance; one less discussed yet consistent finding is that neurological information (which I will later refer to as neuro-information) tends to affect people’s judgments, such as a defendant’s guilt, an article’s scientific credibility, or a supposed criminal’s deserved punishment (Weisberg, et al., 2008; Schweitzer, Saks, Murphy, Roskies, Sinnott-Armstrong, & Gaudet, 2011; Michael, Newman, Cumming, & Garry, 2013; Roskies, et al., 2013). Given this finding, it is still not clear what part of the explanation (e.g., the neuro-language, the image, or both) sways people to think that neuroscience tells us something above and beyond the neuroscience explanation itself.

   

This lack of clarity is particularly problematic insofar as a lengthy debate surrounding just the admission of brain images as evidence has also unfolded in recent years (Morse, 2014). In my opinion, the role of just plain ol’ brain-sounding language has been overshadowed by the debate about the glitziness of brain images. I am not attempting to provide a solution to this definitional and conceptual conundrum; however, I do think that it would be erroneous to conclude either that brain images are entirely not biasing or that all neuroscience possesses unparalleled persuasive power given the disparate and sometimes confusing findings within this area of research.

Image from BosLaw

Shouldn’t individual differences matter? 

It is also important to consider whether all people are truly likely to be swayed by neural language. Researchers have yet to fully explore if there are specific people who are particularly compelled by neural language. One study has examined education level differences, but there are potential other factors that may influence one’s likelihood to fall prey to inaccurately interpreting neural information, such as previous beliefs about neuroscience and motivation to confirm such beliefs (Weisberg, et al., 2008; Scurich & Shniderman, 2014). For instance, people often differ in how they conceptualize psychology. I could see how people who tend to think psychology lacks scientific rigor may tend to believe that neuroscience offers a greater opportunity to understand behavior. Similarly, for some people, the motivation to confirm or disconfirm an issue that a neuroscientific explanation seeks to uphold may matter. For instance, in an interesting variation on these neuro-seduction studies, a group of researchers had people rate the validity of an article that described how neuroscience could or could not support the notion that the death penalty deters people from committing crimes (Scurich & Shniderman, 2014). The authors found that people tended to give more favorable ratings to a particular neuroscientific article when it supported their initial beliefs about the death penalty. Overall, it seems unlikely that neuroscience or neuro-images have the power to overwhelmingly persuade everyone in all circumstances or overturn existing beliefs.



What should we do?

The verdict is not out on the influence of brain imaging in the courtroom. This area of research continues to grow and change as people devise nuanced ways to test why brain images may change behavioral outcomes and who is most likely to succumb to the seductive power of brain information or brain images. Nonetheless, this research has potential to impact our legal system. Ultimately, aside from addressing my two aforementioned questions, I do think that it is important for scientists of all disciplines to continue attempting to explain findings regarding the brain and behavior in the clearest terms possible. As more people learn about what brain imaging and brain information can tell us about behavior, we as researchers must be ever aware of the potential for our findings to be misconstrued in the public or in the courtroom.



References




Farah, M. J., & Hook, C. J. (2013). The seductive allure of “seductive allure”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(1), 88-90.



Farah, M. J., Hutchinson, J. B., Phelps, E. A., & Wagner, A. D. (2014). Functional MRI-based lie detection: scientific and societal challenges. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(2), 123-131.



Jones, O. D., Wagner, A. D., Faigman, D. L., & Raichle, M. E. (2013). Neuroscientists in court. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(10), 730-736.



Morse, S. J. (2014). Brain imaging in the courtroom: the quest for legal relevance. AJOB Neuroscience, 5(2), 24-27.



Roskies, A. L., Schweitzer, N. J., & Saks, M. J. (2013). Neuroimages in court: less biasing than feared. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(3), 99-101.



Saks, M. J., Schweitzer, N. J., Aharoni, E., & Kiehl, K. A. (2014). The impact of neuroimages in the sentencing phase of capital trials. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 11(1), 105-131.



Schweitzer, N. J., Saks, M. J., Murphy, E. R., Roskies, A. L., Sinnott-Armstrong, W., & Gaudet, L. M. (2011). Neuroimages as evidence in a< em> mens rea</em> defense: No impact. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 17(3), 357.



Scurich, N., & Shniderman, A. (2014). The Selective Allure of Neuroscientific Explanations. PloS one, 9(9), e107529.



Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477.








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Marshall, J. (2015). Neuroscience in the Courtroom: An Attempt for Clarity. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on

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