Children's and Adults' Assignment of Blame for Personal Injury

Summary

The present study examined the effect of outcome foreseeability on blame attributions. While most previous studies on assignment of blame for negative outcomes in interpersonal events have focused solely on blame attributed to the perpetrator of the misdeed, the present study examined assignment of blame to the victim as well. Preschoolers (n = 18) were exposed to stories in which an actor with positive or negative motives brought about a foreseeable or unforeseeable injury to another child. Responses to these stories were also obtained from an adult sample (n = 21) to provide a basis for comparison. The analyses of the results indicated, as expected, that children's blame attributions were influenced less by outcome foreseeability than were adults'. Furthermore, children were more likely to assign blame to single, personal sources for unforeseeable outcomes than were adults.