Neuroethics & Law Blog

Executions and IQ Testing

In my first year criminal law class, I teach the case Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), which concerns the constitutionality under the 8th Amendment of executing mentally retarded killers.  A special jury trial started this week to determine whether the subject of that case, Daryl Atkins, is, in fact, mentally retarded such that he cannot be executed.  See informative blog posts and links here and here.  Here's an excerpt from a BBC news article cited at MindHacks:

Atkins' IQ was tested in 1998, and was found to be 59, well below the level at which a person is deemed retarded in Virginia.

But when he was retested following the Supreme Court ruling defence experts found his IQ had risen to 74, while prosecutors said it was two points higher.

Dr Evan Nelson, who tested Atkins in 1998 and 2004, wrote in a report last year that "his constant contact with the many lawyers that worked on his case" gave him more intellectual stimulation in jail than he got during childhood.

"That included practising his reading and writing skills, learning about abstract legal concepts and communicating with professionals."

But prosecutors say Atkins was never retarded in the first place, indicated by the fact that he was able to load a gun, direct the victim to a cash machine and identify a remote spot for the killing.

And here's an interesting snippet on testing for IQ when the taker has a life-or-death incentive to get a low score:

An independent forensic psychologist, Dr Bob Stinson, told the BBC it would be "unusual and unexpected" for a person's IQ to rise 17 points in seven years.

"It would be easy to deliberately do badly on one IQ test," he said.

"But it would be very difficult to feign low cognition across time, different settings and multiple examiners."

Psychology tests used to evaluate a criminal's cognition typically include sophisticated traps to catch fakers.

Difficult questions that appear to be easy may be inserted to test whether people answer correctly because they feel they can allow themselves to get a simple answer right.

Other questions that look very different, but which are actually very similar, may be used to test consistency.

Cognitive Bias, Terror, and the Media

A Saturday op-ed in the New York Times describes how cognitive biases often lead us to react to terrorism in less-than-maximally rational ways.  Here's a sample:

[T]his emotional system can be an extremely naïve statistician, because it was built for a primitive environment with simple dangers. That might work for you the next time you run into a snake or a tiger. But because the emotional system is impressionable and prefers shallow, social and anecdotal information to abstract data, it hinders our ability to cope with the more sophisticated risks that afflict modern life.

For example, the death of an acquaintance in a motorcycle accident would be more likely to deter you from riding a motorcycle than would a dispassionate, and undoubtedly far more representative, statistical analysis of motorcycles' dangers. You might avoid Central Park on the basis of a single comment at a cocktail party, rather than bothering to read the freely available crime statistics that provide a more realistic view of the odds that you will be victimized.

This primacy of the emotions can distort our decision-making. Travelers at airports irrationally tend to agree to pay more for terrorism insurance than they would for general insurance, which includes terrorism coverage. No doubt the word "terrorism" can be specific enough to evoke an emotional reaction, while the general insurance offer wouldn't awaken the travelers' anxieties in the same way.

Perhaps the most controversial part the op-ed is this conclusion:

Like pharmaceutical companies, the news media should study the side effects of their product, one of which is the distortion of the viewer's mental risk map. Because of the way the brain is built, images and striking narratives may well be necessary to get our attention. But just as it takes a diamond to cut a diamond, the news industry should find ways to use images and stories to bring us closer to the statistical truth.

Neuroprivacy Report

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York has published a report on "privacy concerns with respect to mental and cerebral functioning as delineated through brain imaging and other neurodiagnostic techniques -- or what will be referred to here as 'neuroprivacy'".  The report gives particular attention to so-called "brain fingerprinting." An article in today's New York Law Journal (not available free), entitled "Are Your Thoughts Your Own?", describes the report and some of its authors:

Subtitled "'Neuroprivacy' and the Legal Implications of Brain Imaging,"
the 24-page report is meant as a call to action in light of existing and
future developments in the scientific detection of subliminal
preferences, hidden knowledge and "bad thoughts" some might say could
predict dangerous behavior.

. . .
Andrew Mandell, chairman of the city bar's Committee on Science and Law
and an assistant deputy commissioner at the New York City Human
Resources Administration, said, "Our goal is for legislators and the
legal community to ponder these issues and think about steps that may
need to be taken in view of the civil liberties implications."

The report, noted Mr. Mandell, former general counsel to the city's
Department of Mental Health, does not advocate a particular viewpoint.

(Hat Tip: Ivy Lapides)

Neuroeconomics and Rationality

Terrence R. Chorvat (George Mason, Law) and Kevin McCabe (George Mason, Economics) have posted "Neuroeconomics and Rationality" to SSRN.  Here's the link and here's the abstract:

The assumption of rationality is both one of the most important and most controversial assumptions of modern economics. This article discusses what current experimental economic as well as neuroscience research tells us about the relationship between rationality and the mechanisms of human decision-making. The article explores the meaning of rationality, with a discussion of the distinction between traditional constructivist rationality and more ecological concepts of rationality. The article argues that ecological notions of rationality more accurately describe both human neural mechanisms as well as a wider variety of human behavior than do constructivist notions of rationality.

Are SSRI Antidepressants Better Than Placebo?

An article in the BMJ (see here for pdf) questions whether SSRIs (like Prozac) are better than placebo at treating depression.  The authors suggest that, even if SSRIs are marginally better than placebo, the small effect may be due to a general stimulating or depressive effect of the drug rather than any seritonin-related problem in patients.  This article in WebMD discusses the research (making note of Tom Cruise's recent controversial statements posted earlier here) and describes some countervailing opinion. From the WebMD article:

[P]sychiatrist Darrel Regier, MD, MPH, says there is plenty of clinical evidence showing that antidepressants work and that the reviews failed to include important studies showing just that.

Regier, who is director of research for the American Psychiatric Association, noted that Moncrieff is co-founder of a group in the U.K. that questions the very existence of depression and the need to treat it.

"She is of the persuasion that medical disorders are a myth and a social construct, and that there is no biological basis for them," he tells WebMD. "I think what she has done, given her bias, is emphasize the negative [antidepressant] studies and mischaracterize many other ones."

And here's another article on the research.  (via Mind Hacks).

Psychology of Terrorism at Mind Hacks

Mind Hacks Blog posts here with links to some quite controversial research into the psychology of terrorism.  Here's an excerpt:

Despite the insanity of the acts, one of the most common myths is that terrorists are mentally unbalanced in some way. In an article written shortly after 9/11[, psychologist Andrew Silke] noted that even for suicide bombers, evidence for psychopathology or personality disorders is scant.

Work on the impact of terrorist attacks has been most recently focused on the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Silke notes in a more recent article . . . , that although, in general, being closer to the Twin Towers was related to higher levels of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for other people, stress was related to exposure to television reporting.

Trusting Research on Trust

In an editorial in the current issue of the American Journal of Bioethics (posted free on the AJOB Editors Blog here), Glenn McGee and Darby Penny raise research ethics concerns with a study on the effects of oxytocin on trust that I reported on here.  The study found that inhaled oxytocin made subjects substantially more likely to engage in behaviors that seem to demonstrate trust.  They write:

In what is becoming an increasingly tantalizing form of neuroscience, researchers in this study obtained consent not to study the phenomenon about which they were interested, trust, but rather the effect of a hormone more generally. The seemingly subtle shift in language, with its attendant deception, was obviously necessary for the researchers to conduct their study. But did they, and do researchers who would study phenomena of character more generally, have a special responsibility to inform subjects about the risks of “shifts in subject consciousness?” It is more than a question of informed consent that is at hand. For just as there is an obvious irony in manipulating subjects’ inclination to trust in order to study the biochemical basis of that trust, there is a broader safety—and indeed human—concern about whether trust should be scientifically manipulated in clinical studies in this way at all.

They then offer this parade of evils concerning possible future uses of oxytocin:

It doesn’t take a cynic to envision some of the predatory or nefarious purposes to which the findings of this study might be put in social and interpersonal interactions. The possibility that this substance could become a new date rape drug is chilling. Governments might use chemical means to enhance citizens’ trust in its policies and actions; one can only imagine how this might be used to sway public opinion or stifle dissent. Political candidates could use it to reap the benefits of unearned trust at the polls. Schools, employers and the military might use the drug to increase control over and enhance the compliance of students, workers, and soldiers. Powerful commercial interests could have a field day with oxytocin: retailers could better manipulate customers, corporations could overcome skepticism about their environmental practices or the value of their stock, and used car salesman would have an advantage that went beyond the “new car smell” aerosols they currently spray in vehicles. The number of ways in which the unscrupulous could use such a substance for harm is probably endless.

Of course, the researchers see the matter quite differently and find that the research may have “positive clinical implications for patients with mental disorders that are associated with social dysfunction (for example, social phobia or autism).”  See the text of the editorial for more.

More on Bisexuality

Here are some letters to the editor in today's science section of the New York Times, principally critical of some research, noted here, that purports to challenge whether men can be bisexual.

False Confession Empirical Work

Cognitive Daily has this excellent post describing empirical research from the mid-90s on false confessions (under artificial, experimental conditions).  The results show a surprising number of college students who will admit to pressing a button on a keyboard that they never pressed when circumstances suggested that they might have done so.  Here's an excerpt:

Participants — psychology majors at Williams College who participated for course credit — were told they were taking part in a study of reaction times. They were tested in groups of two, one of which was a confederate. The confederate read a list of letters to the naive participant, who then typed them into a computer as quickly as possible. Before the experiment began, participants were instructed not to hit the Alt key, as this would cause the computer to crash and data to be lost. Sure enough, about one minute into the experiment, the computer did “crash” — without the participant doing anything wrong — and the distraught experimenter rushed into the room and immediately accused them of hitting the Alt key.

Participants were then asked to sign a confession. If they refused, they were asked again. Sixty-nine percent eventually signed. Finally, when they left the experiment room, a second confederate was sitting in the waiting area, apparently ready to participate in the next session. The experimenter told this confederate she’d have to be rescheduled and left the room. To assess if they actually believed their confession, the second confederate asked the participant what happened. Twenty-eight percent of participants expressed belief in their guilt to this stranger, indicating that they had “pressed the wrong key” or something similar.

Finally, the experimenter brought the participant back to the original room and asked them to re-enact the mishap. This was done to see if people would confabulate, or invent, details supporting their confession. Nine percent of them did.

Defendant Skeptical/Honest to a Fault

At sentencing after a guilty plea, the defendant described here was asked if he would ever commit his crime again when released.  As Brian Weatherson paraphrases the response, the defendant "said that he didn't know because he didn't have an answer to global scepticism."  Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post, which is probably worth reading in full:

"What are the chances of you doing this again?" the judge asked.

Timmers -- dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, his long, white hair flowing down his back -- paused a moment before speaking up.

"There's always a chance of anything, Your Honor," he said.

The judge's jaw dropped. He pressed Timmers to be clear.

"The odds of that happening are 800 million billion to one," Timmers said, "but I can't ever rule anything out completely, Sir."

Sullivan, who has heard thousands of cases in more than two decades on the bench, said he was "astonished." "I don't think in my entire judicial career anyone's ever told me, 'Yeah, I might do this again.' "

"I didn't mean to upset you," Timmers told the judge at one point.

Defense attorney Tony Axam of the Federal Public Defender's Office tried to explain that Timmers, a self-employed woodcutter, is a "deeply, deeply philosophical person" -- for whom there were no absolutes.

(via Brian Weatherson's Blog)

Bioethics Mediation at the End-of-Life

The New York Times reports here on an ethics committee at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and how it attempts to mediate potential bioethical conflicts among family members and doctors when patients are unable to make medical decisions for themselves.  The article states that "Montefiore's program uses the tools of mediation, common in business and divorce but relatively new to medicine."  The article describes in some detail a recent case where family members sought removal of life-sustaining medical treatment, while doctors expressed hesitations.

HealthLawProf Blog offers some commentary here and suggests that, contrary to the impressions of the article, the program at Montefiore is not so revolutionary. (Thanks to Ivy Lapides for the pointer.)

Gay, Straight, or Lying?

The New York Times reports here on some recent research questioning whether straight men can be bisexual.  Here's an excerpt:

In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.

The study is the largest of several small reports suggesting that the estimated 1.7 percent of men who identify themselves as bisexual show physical attraction patterns that differ substantially from their professed desires.

"Research on sexual orientation has been based almost entirely on self-reports, and this is one of the few good studies using physiological measures," said Dr. Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender identity at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study.

And here's some criticism from the same article:

But other researchers - and some self-identified bisexuals - say that the technique used in the study to measure genital arousal is too crude to capture the richness - erotic sensations, affection, admiration - that constitutes sexual attraction.

Social and emotional attraction are very important elements in bisexual attraction, said Dr. Fritz Klein, a sex researcher and the author of "The Bisexual Option."

"To claim on the basis of this study that there's no such thing as male bisexuality is overstepping, it seems to me," said Dr. Gilbert Herdt, director of the National Sexuality Resource Center in San Francisco. "It may be that there is a lot less true male bisexuality than we think, but if that's true then why in the world are there so many movies, novels and TV shows that have this as a theme - is it collective fantasy, merely a projection? I don't think so."