Ideology as determinant of views on the insanity defense

This research explores the hypothesis that an individual's position on the insanity defense is a function of his/her underlying ideology. Fifty-seven clinical psychologists and fifty-five psychiatrists in the United States responded to a questionnaire that measured their beliefs about personal vs. social responsibility for crime, the frequency of their own experience as expert witnesses in insanity cases, and their attitudes toward the insanity defense. As predicted, locus of responsibility for crime was found to have a highly significant curvilinear relationship to attitude toward the insanity defense, with very liberal and very conservative subjects being most anti-insanity defense. Psychiatrists, and those with more expert witness experience, were also significantly more favorable toward the insanity defense.