Verb Aspect and its Role in Reasoning About Guilt

This study investigates the effects of verb aspect on legal judgments. In three experiments, that were presented in French to French speakers, participants received a scenario about a case of HIV transmission, in which the actions of the person referred to as responsible for the transmission were described using imperfective or perfective aspect. Furthermore, in experiment 1, the accused was portrayed as aware (versus unaware) of his HIV status, and in experiment 2, he was portrayed as having (versus not having) a previous criminal record. In experiment 3, the lexical verbs used to describe his behavior made the accused a high volitional agent (versus low volitional). Participants read the report and then made judgments on intentionality, expressed feelings toward the accused and ascribed him a blame and sentence. Results revealed that imperfective descriptions resulted in higher perceived intentionality, higher blame attribution, more dislike and higher sentence. But they also showed that these effects of imperfective versions occurred primarily when the accused was portrayed as knowing his seropositivity (experiment 1), having a criminal record (experiment 2) and when the volition of his behavior was attenuated (experiment 3). These findings provide novel insights about how language subtleties can impact perceptions of criminal intentionality and its related judgments.