Aguiar, F.’s scientific contributions

In this paper we explore whether an action’s severity of outcome (somewhat bad v. very bad) influences attributions of intentionality, knowledge and moral judgment. In between-subjects studies conducted in twelve countries from the Americas, Asia and Europe, we found a robust severity effect on all DVs (except for India). The effect arises to similar degrees for legal expert samples from four different countries (Brazil, UK, the Netherlands, Poland). Given that the severity effect is significantly reduced in within-subjects designs for both laypeople and experts in all countries, we argue that it constitutes a bias, and that this is of particular importance for mens rea assessment in legal contexts.