A perpetrator’s mental state – whether she had mens rea or a
“guilty mind” – typically plays an important role in evaluating
wrongness and assigning punishment. In two experiments, we
find that this role for mental states is weaker in evaluating
conventional violations relative to moral violations. We also
find that this diminished role for mental states may be
associated with the fact that conventional violations are
wrong by virtue of having violated a (potentially arbitrary)
rule, whereas moral violations are also wrong inherently
