Provocation is an extenuating ground. In law of homicide, it reduces murder to manslaughter. In nonhomicide cases, it sometimes is explicitly recognized as grounds for sentence reduction. The Swedish sentencing law, for example, treats as reducing crime's penal value (that is, seriousness) fact that the crime was elicited by another's grossly offensive behaviour.(1) Such treatment assumes that agent acting under provocation deserves less blame for his or her criminal conduct than an agent would for having committed same act without having been provoked. In this article, we shall address three competing theories that purport to explain why provocation extenuates. The first is derived from common law doctrine of anger and treats provoked actor as being in grip of powerful emotions that diminish his capacity to conform to law. We call this model of provocation. The second is found in a recent book by Jeremy Horder.(2) This theory, unlike common-law doctrine, treats provocation cases as involving actor's justified sense of outrage at having been wronged by victim, rather than involving impaired volition. Horder suggests that (if provocation plea should be preserved at all) it is because a just is acting with propriety (or at least, without impropriety in particular situation) if he expresses that outrage through a proportionate act of retaliation. The third account, set forth in a 1987 essay by Nils Jareborg and one of present authors,(3) also views actor's sense of outrage as an appropriate emotional response to his having been wronged. However, actor's retaliatory act is not treated as morally justified but, instead, as being partially excused in virtue of divided role of conscience which such situations create. The purpose of present essay is to distinguish moral/psychological assumptions and implications of three explanations. We shall suggest why impaired volition model is not a satisfactory account of provocation. We shall argue that Horder's analysis fails also because it does not deal adequately with whether provocation plays a justifying or excusing role. Finally, we shall suggest that third theory--the moral conflict model--remains, both morally and legally, preferable explanation of why (and how) provocation extenuates. In order to illustrate relevance of our analysis to a legal system, we have sketched how various views of provocation we discuss would bear on law of a particular jurisdiction. The jurisdiction we select is England--because it has considerable case law and academic commentary on subject. We are not, however, trying to develop a theory that is designed to account for existing English law. Rather, we are concerned with how a legal system ought best to treat provocation, in light of underlying conceptions involved. The Impaired Volition Theory The common-law doctrine of provocation has two main requirements. First, act must be done in hot anger, shortly after victim's provocative behavior. If actor waits or acts with apparent deliberation, he or she can no longer qualify. Second, victim's behavior had to be such as would cause a person to act as defendant did.(4) These requirements comport with a theory of reduced volition: that is less to blame when his or her capacity for self-control was affected by another's misconduct. An act done in heat of moment, arguably, is less than fully volitional. However, actor had some choice, and that is why conduct is not fully excused. The common-law doctrine refers to response of person: not only must actor lose control, but provocation must be such as might cause a reasonable to do so. This latter requirement does not mean that action should be reasonable--for that would make provocation a justification (full or partial). …