Blame and Punishment for Intoxicated Aggression: when is the Perpetrator Culpable?

Aim: To systematically test the hypothesis that intoxicated individuals are viewed as less culpable than relatively sober individuals for engaging in aggressive behaviour.

Design: A series of experimental vignettes depicted alcohol use in the context of unwanted touching, date rape, assault and rape, vandalism and common assault. Each vignette manipulated drinking of the perpetrator and selected contextual variables using between-subjects experimental designs.

Setting: A stratified random sample of 994 Ontario residents responded to these scenarios in the course of a telephone interview.

Measurements: Three measures were analysed in this study: (1) judgements of the causal role of the perpetrator's drinking in leading to each outcome, (2) perceived blameworthiness of the perpetrator, and (3) appropriate punishment for the perpetrator.

Findings: Drinking was believed to play a greater causal role in leading to each outcome when the perpetrator was portrayed as "drunk" as opposed to merely "feeling the effects". However, intoxication did not attenuate perceived blameworthiness and only inconsistently reduced punishment assigned to perpetrators. Instead, intoxication interacted with premeditation, criminal history and gender to determine perceived culpability of perpetrators. In some scenarios, victim intoxication reduced perceived culpability of the perpetrator.

Conclusions: Legal, anthropological, and attributional accounts may overestimate the extent to which perpetrator intoxication--in and of itself--determines perceived culpability for alcohol-related aggression.