Abstract

The Korean law describes that the legal judgment of self-defence should accord with the victim’s intent to harm the offender, which could be a major cause of distrust toward the legal system. This may due to how lay people rely on the information regarding offenders’ intent to harm victims for self-defence judgements. The current study investigated the psychological mechanisms underlying perceived justifiability of a victim’s self-defence acts, specifically focusing on the role of victim’s intent to harm the offender in regards to offender’s intent to harm the victim. Eighty-six participants read a scenario varying with offender’s intent to harm (i.e., intent to harm included or no intent to harm) and made judgments of justifiability and perceived self-defence on the victim’s act. The results showed that the inclusion of offender’s intent to harm influenced perceived victim’s intent to harm as well as justifiability of victim’s action. When the offender had the intent to harm the victim, the victim was perceived to have lower intent to harm the offender and victim’s actions were seemed more justifiable and more self-defending. Furthermore, the perceived victim’s intent to harm played a (partial) mediating role on the justifiability of the victim’s act depending on the inclusion of offender’s intent to harm. The findings suggested the implications for understanding the potential cause of the conflict between the legal system and lay people’s judgements regarding self-defence cases.