Intervening causation and the mitigation of responsibility for harm

Events which occur between a previous behaviour and a later consequence, and which help to produce the consequence (intervening causes), are an important element in determining legal responsibility. An experiment was therefore conducted to clarify the conditions under which the concept of intervening causation is used by lay observers to produce judgements of causation, blame and restitution in cases of harm-doing. Results indicated that an intervening cause decreased the extremity of all three types of judgement to a greater extent when the intervention was voluntary rather than involuntary, and more when the intervention was unforeseeable, than when it was foreseeable. Path analyses of relations among the dependent variables were consistent with a model specifying that restitution judgements are determined by those of blame which are, in turn, determined by those of causation. Alternative models are also discussed together with several further hypotheses regarding intervening causation.