The Effects of Intentionality and Validation on Individual and Collective Responsibility Attribution Among Hong Kong Chinese

ABSTRACT

Two experiments were conducted to test the effects of intentionality and validation on moral evaluation, causal attribution, personal and collective responsibility attribution, and justice judgment among Hong Kong junior business executives or management assistants. Based on ratings of scenarios, the results revealed that both the intentionality and validation of an act were significant determinants of moral evaluations and dispositional attribution. In both experiments, responsibility for the protagonist's misdeed was generalized to members of the protagonist's collective. The target (to whom collective responsibility was attributed) varied with the context in which the act was carried out.