Volitional Impairment Research Articles

Etiologic and Phenotypic Similarities between Medication-Induced Syndromes and Courts' Customary Interpretation of Mental Disease in Exculpatory Defenses

There is a great deal of similarity between psychological disorders generally accepted by the courts as potentially exculpatory conditions, and the psychological syndrome often experienced by Parkinson's patients taking dopaminergic medications. A successful exculpatory defense must provide evidence of a mental disease or defect and sufficient cognitive or volitional impairment at the time of the offense. This medication-induced dopaminergic syndrome is consistent with courts' typical interpretation of a mental disease, and has key similarities (including pathophysiology and clinical presentation) with schizophrenia disorders, which courts generally consider exculpatory. All together, there is strong evidence that suggests medication-induced dopaminergic psychological conditions that are causally related to a crime could form the basis of a successful exculpatory defense considering courts' current interpretation of these criminal defenses.

Decision-making about volitional impairment in sexually violent predators.

The Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) decision, in which the Supreme Court authorized post-sentence civil commitment for certain sex offenders, appeared to be constitutionally legitimized by limiting the class of offenders eligible for this special form of civil commitment to those who are "unable to control" their dangerousness. Nowhere in the available record, however, did the Court elucidate what they meant by this notion of volitional impairment. This study sought to examine factors that legal professionals (n=43), psychologists (n=40), and mock jurors (n=76) deem most relevant to a determination of sex offender volitional impairment. Participants, who were randomly assigned to a sexual predator commitment or an insanity hearing context, read a series of 16 vignettes that described a pedophilic offender and included combinations of variables hypothesized to be related to judgments of volitional impairment. Results suggested that participants, who as a group made remarkably high estimates of likelihood of future sexual violence, considered verbalization of control, history of sexual violence, and the context of the hearing as highly relevant to determinations of volitional impairment. Implications for policy and practice are explored.

The Paraphilia‐Related Disorders: An Investigation of the Relevance of the Concept in Sexual Murderers*

Paraphilic disorders (PAs) and sexual preoccupation are known risk factors for recidivism in sexual offenders. Nonparaphilic sexual excessive behaviors-so-called paraphilia-related disorders (PRDs), like paraphilias, are also characterized by sexual preoccupation and volitional impairment and can be diagnosed in paraphilic men. The prevalence and clinical significance of PRDs in sexual homicide perpetrators, however, is unknown. We investigated the relationship between PAs and PRDs retrospectively in a sample of 161 sexual murderers. Four groups were compared: men without a PA or a PRD diagnosis, men with at least one PRD but no PA, men with at least one PA but no PRD, and finally, those with a combination of both (PA+PRD). The PA+PRD group had the most lifetime cumulative sexual impulsivity disorders, more developmental problems, the highest persistent frequency of sexual activity, the highest number of previous sexual offences, more sexual sadism, and compulsive masturbation. Men of the PRD subsample had suffered more from childhood sexual abuse, showed more promiscuity, psychopathy, and alcohol problems. The use of the PRD concept in this special offender group should be further investigated with prospectively designed studies.

Volitional Impairment and the Sexually Violent Predator

This article discusses psychiatry's limited conceptualization of volitional capacity and its application to sexually violent predator laws by exploring two legal opinions critical to predator case law (Kansas v. Hendricks and Kansas v. Crane). The author reviewed pertinent psychiatric literature on impaired volition to identify potential contributions and limitations that psychiatry may offer the legal field. Assessment of the ego dystonic nature of impaired self-regulation, utilization of recent advances in self-assessment and laboratory evaluation of impulsive behavior, and dimensional categorization of a volitional capacity construct are recommended as an approach to the assessment and understanding of an inability to control concept. This paper concludes that elements of volition may be psychiatrically evaluated in a way that contributes to the Court's understanding of that capacity. However, further study is needed to operationally define volitional capacity and address issues of assessment validity and reliability.

The legal standard of volitional impairment: An analysis of substantive due process and the United States Supreme Court's decision in Kansas v. Hendricks

This article considers the substantive due process issues concerning the involuntary commitment of sexually violent offenders following criminal incarceration. In Kansas v. Hendricks, the United States Supreme Court upheld a Kansas statute permitting the civil commitment of “sexually violent predators” against constitutional challenges. This article examines the legal standard of “volitional impairment” used by the Court as the basis for it finding that the statute does not offend substantive due process. The Court's decision is critically evaluated in terms of its implications for the systems of criminal law and civil confinement.

"Give Me a Break! I Couldn't Help Myself!"?: Rejecting Volitional Impairment as a Basis for Departure under Federal Sentencing Guidelines Section 5K2.13

Child abusers, compulsive gamblers, kleptomaniacs, pedophiles, and others who know they are breaking the law but are unable to resist their impulses may get a break if they are sentenced in federal court. This is the result of a 1997 Third Circuit decision in which the court held that a defendant's volitional impairment may justify a reduction in sentencing, even if the defendant knew what she was doing, and knew that it was wrong.1 More specifically, the court ruled that a defendant's lack of self-control could serve as an independent basis for downward departure from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (the Guidelines) pursuant to section 5K2.13, which authorizes departures due to reduced mental capacity.2 As of November 1, 1998, the U. S. Sentencing Commission (the Commission) officially endorsed this approach.3

Criminal Law. Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Third Circuit Holds That Volitional Impairments Can Support a Claim of Diminished Mental Capacity. United States v. McBroom, 124 F.3d 533 (3d Cir. 1997)

Criminal Law. Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Third Circuit Holds That Volitional Impairments Can Support a Claim of Diminished Mental Capacity. United States v. McBroom, 124 F.3d 533 (3d Cir. 1997)

Who Controls Whom When "I Control Myself"?

Baumeister and Heatherton's target article on selfregulation failure reminded me of my first attempt to bake bread. My mother had told me all the ingredients but I did not know how to put them together: The result was closer to some sort of cereal pudding than to bread, but grandpa liked it it was easy to swallow. Because we are still in the childhood years of experimental research on human volition, it is a remarkable achievement to present virtually all the ingredients that seem necessary for a theory of volition and volitional impairment (self-regulation failure). Nonetheless, the authors are far from explaining how all the phenomena they cite make a theory of volition. Such a theory should be able to resolve some of the paradoxes they mention and it should answer even more basic questions they forget to ask. For example, are the authors correct in stating that eating or drinking binges are cases of successful self-control because the person thinks that eating or drinking will remedy the emotional distress or are these symptoms examples of self-regulation failure as may be more in accordance with common wisdom? Do self-regulation failures like broken diets, sexual acts one later regrets, smoking and drinking, and the most violent and impulsive crimes occur late at night if are generally fatigued late in the evening, then self-regulation should break down more at such times than at others? Or do people do these things at night they have excellent selfregulatory skills that enable them to delay these attractive activities until the evening when they can be more successfully exercised than during the day? Self-regulation research is indeed beset with theoretical ambiguities to such an extent that many scholars have yielded to the temptation of solving all problems by a simple method: proclaiming volitional concepts as unscientific and reducing them to basic, nonvolitional concepts or even banning them from scientific psychology altogether (Allport, 1980; Allport & Styles, 1989; Ryle, 1949; Skinner, 1971). Despite the many conceptual confusions and operational problems involved in this research, I am convinced that psychologists will never be able to explain complex phenomena of human behavior without concepts like volition, willpower, self-regulation, and self-control. I also believe that such concepts will again be neglected or banned by the scientific community unless we find better solutions to the theoretical and methodological problems raised by these concepts. There is much we can learn from phenomenological reflections as illustrated by approaches that have been even more systematic than Baumeister and Heatherton's (mainly phenomenological) approach (e.g., Ach, 1910; Dennett, 1984; Gollwitzer, 1990; Heckhausen, 1991, p. 175). However, there are limits of introspection when we try to model the architecture and processes underlying human behavior in general (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) and self-regulated behavior in particular. From my own research I have learned that, for resolving some of the paradoxes of volition,' we need both introspective and objective data; we need not only phenomenological, but also functional concepts that are derived from a systems-oriented design perspective (Allport & Styles, 1989; Johnson-Laird, 1983; Kuhl, 1984, 1986; Kuhl & Beckmann, 1994b; Shallice, 1988). The latter approaches search for the architecture and mechanisms underlying self-regulation. Searching for this architecture amounts to asking more and more specific questions concerning the who or what that does the regulation in self-regulation. I describe, in a nutshell, attempts to resolve some of the difficult conceptual and methodological questions left untouched in Baumeister and Heatherton's target article. At the outset of my own research program, I described volitional competence as somehow related to the ability to stick to an intention and shield it against competing action tendencies (Kuhl, 1981, 1983a; cf. Mischel & Baker, 1975; Patterson & Mischel, 1976). The first important thing I learned was that concepts like self-regulation and volition do not refer to a unitary mechanism or function. I postulated and later confirmed that self-regulatory ability can be decomposed into several mechanisms and strategies people use to maintain their goals (and their selves): They focus on information supporting their active intentions (attention control), they modify their motivation when they