When parents are in an acrimonious separation process, it can be difficult to detach the children from the fight between the parents. At worst, children can become a weapon to attack the other parent with. This article looks at the role that the psychological process of attribution and moral disengagement plays in this.

Recently the term ‘parental alienation’ has slipped into our vernacular, and anecdotally family lawyers report that these cases, or at least allegations of parental alienation, have become more common. Parental alienation syndrome claims that one of the parents (normally the primary or custodial parent) mentally manipulates children so they refuse to have contact with the other parent.[1]  

The theory would have us believe that a manipulative parent convinces a child to somehow delude themselves into believing that their other parent has actually harmed them. The goal is to have the legal system to intervene to punish the other parent and prevent them from having contact with the child. This is complicated territory because the theory assumes that children routinely lie and are easy to manipulate to make up claims of non-existent aggressions.

If the accusation is of a sexual nature, this often cannot be proven medically, and the absence of evidence can be used as proof of alienation. Of course the fact that something cannot be proven does not mean that it did not happen. There are, unfortunately, cases where children have been abused by a parent and there is no medical signs of damage. In those cases the evidence comes from questioning the child directly, and an abusive parent might say that the child has been manipulated by the other parent to lie, and demand the court to act to protect the child from the manipulative parent.

Parental complaints are most times the result of actual child abuse, and the court system would run the risk of failing to protect children if they accept false arguments of children being manipulated / alienated.

Nonetheless, it is common for people to lie in the family court system, and there do exist those people who use their children to attack the other parent. Judicial manipulation is harmful and devastating for the victim parent, and also extremely serious for the child. Understanding why people lie and ways to identify those who are more likely to lie, will help both legal practitioners and family law litigants.

What does parental alienation look like?

In cases where a child has been alienated from one parent, by the preferred parent, we see continuous occurrences of the below:

1. The child repeatedly complains about the other parent;

2. The child provides a frivolous reason for not wanting to see the other parent;

3. When the child tells a story about something that has happened, they use the same language as their preferred parent;

4. The child reflexively aligns with their preferred parent in any given scenario, whether warranted or not;

5. The child specifically states that they have formed their views without the input from their preferred parent. Without being asked they tell the report writer that they have not been influenced and have their own thoughts on the matter;

6. The child lacks ambivalence, meaning they see their preferred parent as totally good, and their other parent as bad.

WHY LEARN ABOUT THIS?

Lawyers can become unhelpfully aligned with their clients for the very same reasons that their clients lie and act unethically. Everyone is susceptible to unconscious biases and psychological strategies developed to keep us feeling safe. An effective lawyer will listen to their client’s narrative to ensure that they feel heard, and so we can understand from where the client is coming from and what might be driving their behaviour. But to act in our clients’ best interests, we must keep our focus on what the evidence shows.

The research clearly shows that people think we think we are more truthful than we actually are. And we generally overrate our ability to detect deception.

In a healthy individual, lies trigger arousal. This is the basis for the lie detector. However when a psychopath lies, there is increased blood flow in their frontal lobe which calms them down. The act of lying decreases arousal. This means that lie detectors do not detect lies in the very group of people in whom it is most important to detect lies. For this, and a variety of other reasons, Australian courts do not accept evidence obtained by a lie detector.

Expert evidence in family law parenting matters often comes in the form of family reports, child impact statements and forensic examinations by psychiatrists and psychologists. In these interviews people can be truthful, providing an honest and fair representation, overstate, for example exaggerating one’s symptoms or effects of an experience, or understate, for example by minimising how much one drinks. Overstating and understating could be deliberate, because a person lacks insight, for impression management or all of those reasons.

It becomes a difficult task for the expert, lawyers and judges to work out if an account is genuine and accurately reported, genuine but poorly reported, genuine but poorly reported due to reasons such as anxiety or poor memory, genuine but exaggerated, completely fabricated, an attempt to present in a positive light, an attempting to conceal….. or a bit of all of these things!

But whatever it is, we know enough to assume that taking what someone says at face value will likely lead to error.

And this is because lying is a complicated process, it’s not simply true or false. Some people have distorted reality and believe what they are saying is true, even in the face of evidence that it is not. This can lead people to do things that are harmful to children that they say they love, such as alienating them from their other parent.

Attribution

Attribution is how we make sense of the world – it is a psychological process required for survival. We need to ascribe reasons for what we see and experience so that we can feel safe and that we have some control over what happens to us.

If done right, attributions help us make sense of what is happening, control our life and respond to the world in a healthy way.

If done wrong, we develop incorrect beliefs which is dangerous because beliefs determine how we respond to our environment. Acting in accordance with incorrect beliefs creates problems for ourselves and those around us.

 If trust between parents is very low, which is almost always the case in family law disputes, where information is missing, a negative attribution will be made to form a conclusion. For example, if a parent considers their child at risk of physical harm, seeing a bruise on their child’s leg will lead to a particular conclusion.

Attribution is also used to interpret the purpose behind someone’s behaviour. For example, conduct at the start of the relationship, such as excessive contact from a new boyfriend and him wanting to know where you are, might be seen as a sign that the boyfriend cares about you and your safety. At the end of the relationship, this exact same behaviour is seen as a mechanism to control you. (note: excessive contact at any time in the relationship is a red flag and should not be ignored). The behaviour is the same, but the purpose behind the behaviour is interpreted differently.

The function of a court is to make a ruling as to facts, so that the decision-maker can apply the relevant laws to those facts. In property matters, where separating couples are dividing their assets and liabilities, it doesn’t matter what a person believes.  The judge is not going to be interested in what someone believes their house is worth, the court will defer to an expert’s opinion, or the market will determine the value if sold. However, in parenting matters, it is necessary to not just find the facts, but also consider what people believe to be the facts. This is to ensure parenting orders can be crafted in a way that they will be adhered to. For example, having changeover at the parents’ home when one party presents as genuinely terrified of the other parent, is not going to work. The family will inevitably be back in court, and that is clearly not in the children’s best interest, even when the feelings of terror lack any foundation.

Understanding attribution, including retrospective attribution, helps lawyers understand why their own client’s evidence can change during the course of the matter. People look back and see the history of their relationship, and even their own life, very differently from how they used to see it. People change their beliefs about things as time progresses, they interpret intentions differently.

In a relationship, people ignore or minimise problems to avoid having to make a change or difficult decision. After they have left the relationship, they focus on and are hypervigilant about the same problems, to support their decisions.

This is challenging for lawyers as we require evidence to be consistent!

Internal v external attributions

We ascribe either an internal or external reason for the behaviour that we witness. For example if someone is late we can ascribe an internal reason – ‘they’re disorganised’, or an external reason ‘traffic must be bad’. We tend to ascribe internal reasons for ourselves when things go well, and external reasons when things don’t.

In family law litigation we commonly see that a party will place all the blame for a problem on their ex-spouse. This is psychologically protective, because if it’s the other person’s fault, then they don’t need to make any changes. People are motivated to see the world in a way that ensures that it’s others, not them, who need to change.

Given that it is a subconscious process, some attributions can be hard to shift as they are fundamental core beliefs.

Fundamental attribution error

There is a well-researched phenomenon called Fundamental Attribution Error, also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect. It’s the tendency for people to under-emphasis situational and environmental explanations for an individual’s observed behaviour while over emphasising dispositional and personality-based explanations for their own behaviour. As a lawyer, we might do this by attributing a successful hearing outcome to being well-prepared and good on our feet, and blaming an unsuccessful outcome on a biased judge. Everyone does this to some extent, but people with certain personality disorders, such as narcissistic personality disorder are extremely proficient at this. There seems to be no end to the mental gymnastics they can do to ensure they never need to take responsibility for anything. But we must always remember that avoiding responsibility and blaming others does not in and of itself mean someone has a personality disorder!

Victim blaming bias, is based on the fundamental assumption that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, or otherwise known as the ‘just world hypothesis’. Having this basic, usually unconscious assumption makes us feel less vulnerable in an uncontrollable world. It is also a convenient way to shift responsibility from ourselves or society onto the victims. As lawyers, we need to always be cognisant that clients make this assumption, other lawyers make this assumption, we ourselves make this assumption and even victims make this assumption.

Moral disengagement attribution

Moral disengagement is characterised by continuous antisocial behaviour, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits[2] and remorselessness[3]

This explains why people commit a transgression that violates their personal standards, for example lying in court. When we do something that we would normally consider wrong, we tend to experience a negative effect coming from acting adversely to our principles. So if we tell a lie when we are normally an honest person, we won’t want to remain in that discomfort, so we will either come clean and apologise, or reduce our moral standards so that we don’t feel bad.  The latter is a self-serving bias that allows us to behave against our own principles without feeling bad, and to restructure antisocial behaviours into benign ones. This explains the tricky phenomenon lawyers see when their client is appalled at their ex-spouse’s capacity to lie or exaggerate in court documents, when they themselves are doing the same thing. Essentially this is a process of convincing oneself that ethical standards do not apply to oneself in a particular context.

There are three mechanisms of Moral Disengagement:

1. A person reattributes their behaviour in a more positive way – this can be done via moral justification/a higher purpose, for example lying to the police to ensure someone is removed from the home, because that person thinks this is a better outcome for the children; make advantageous comparisons, “I raised my voice, but I have never hit my kids”, or using euphemistic language, for example describing striking a child as a ‘tap on the bum’.

2. A person reattributes their role. This can be done by displacing responsibility. “She made me do it”; diffusing responsibility, which is acknowledging only a small part of responsibility or distorting the consequences of harm, for example, ‘Yes I punched him, but it didn’t hurt him’.

3. Reattribute the recipient of the transgression – this includes blaming the victim or dehumanising the victim by attributing to them negative qualities which make them less deserving. We see this when people don’t take seriously sexual assault allegations by sex workers.    

The Dark Triad: Narcissism; Machiavellianism; Subclinical psychopathy

It is a common belief and certainly, research shows that people who are willing to lie about issues concerning the other parent and their children during a couple break-up process show higher levels of dark triad traits.[4]

The Dark Triad is a psychological theory of personality[5], that describes three notably offensive, but non-pathological personality types: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism, and sub-clinical psychopathy.

1. Narcissism is characterised by grandiosity, pride, egotism and a lack of empathy. [6]

2. Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, an absence of morality, unemotional callousness and a higher level of self-interest.[7]

3. Subclinical psychopathy refers to individuals who exhibit many of the characteristics of psychopathy, except for some of the more severe antisocial behaviours. 

There has been a lot of focus on if there is a positive correlation between a parents’ willingness to lie about issues concerning the other parent and their children in family law disputes and  higher levels of dark triad traits

However, a 2019 study[8] compared moral disengagement versus the Dark Triad traits and found that moral disengagement was a much better predictor of willingness to harm their partner in a custody dispute.

Moral disengagement captures global aspects of the tendency to ignore self-control over transgressions and seems to be a better predictor of the inclination to behave unethically against the other parent. It’s not surprising, the more easily one can disconnect from their usual moral standard, the more likely they will lie to their child and lie in court. Lying to the child of course causes alienation

Due to Moral Justification, a parent forms distorted beliefs about reality and then uses those distorted beliefs to distort their children’s own Moral Justification. This involves:

1. Denigration ‘eg “he was never here” “I am a better parent” “she was abusive”

2. Creating an absence of guilt and offering reward for negative behaviour to do with the other parent, for example taking them out for ice cream if they refuse to attend a visit;

3. Reinforcement of scenarios that are negative as proof – for example, if the other parent forgets something this is proof that they don’t love the child.

4. Dehumanising the other parent – getting the child to call the other parent by their first name, or referring to them by derogatory names.

5. They induce fear in the child, make them feel like the child will lose their love if they show positive feelings towards the other parent.

6. Attribute all of their problems and the child’s problems to the other parent.

Conclusion

Anyone involved in family law disputes would benefit from understanding more about why people lie and the psychological process by which distorted reality occurs. This can assist in identifying when people are engaged in mechanisms of moral disengagement such as victim blaming, using euphemistic language, displacing responsibility, minimising consequences of their behaviour, etc.

If we understand that we are subject to the psychological process of attributions, we can compensate logically for the deficits of human perception. We can earlier identify if someone is more likely to act unethically against an ex-partner. This is particularly important in cases where one parent is alleging parental alienation, because inevitably in these cases one or both parents must be lying or have a distorted view of what is actually occuring.

[1] Gardner, R.A. The Parental Alienation Syndrome; Creative Therapeutics: Cresskill, NJ, USA, 1998.

[2] Frick, Paul J.; White, Stuart F. (April 2008). "Research Review: The importance of callous-unemotional traits for developmental models of aggressive and antisocial behavior". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell. 49 (4): 359–375. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01862.x. PMID 18221345.

[3] Jump up to:a b Skeem, Jennifer L.; Polaschek, Devon L. L.; Patrick, Christopher J.; Lilienfeld, Scott O. (15 December 2011). "Psychopathic Personality". Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. 12 (3): 95–162. doi:10.1177/1529100611426706. PMID 26167886. S2CID 8521465

[4] Clemente M, Espisnosa P, Padilla D (2020) The Dark Triad and the detection of parental judicial manipulators. Development of a judicial manipulation scale. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020,17, 2843; doi:10.3390/ijerph17082843

[5] Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002, Dark Triad" Psychology Today United Kingdom.2002 

[6] Kohut, Heinz (1977). The Restoration of the Self. New York City: International Universities Press. ISBN 978-0-8236-5810-7.

[7] Jump up to:a b Jakobwitz, Sharon; Egan, Vincent (January 2006). "The dark triad and normal personality traits". Personality and Individual Differences. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. 40 (2): 331–339. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2005.07.006.

[8] Clemente M, Espisnosa P, Padilla D (2019) Moral disengagement and willingness to behave unethically against ex-partner in a child custody dispute. PLos ON 14(3) eo213662.