Causal deviance and the ascription of intent and blame

ABSTRACT

Research indicates that actors who intentionally bring about harmful consequences are blamed more for their actions than those who do so unintentionally. However, in many instances of harmful behavior, intentions are ambiguous. The Culpable Control Model of Blame (CCM) predicts that the degree to which an actor is blamed for causing a harmful outcome is strongly influenced by information about the actor’s character, motives, or desires and that initial blame assessments impact important blame-related criteria such as judgements regarding the actor’s intent. Deviant causal sequences, those in which negative outcomes occur in ways that the actor did not foresee, are highly unlikely, or are coerced, include circumstances that could mitigate assignment of blame. Such sequences provide a test of predictions derived from the CCM. Findings of three studies supported a model in which participants ascribed greater blame to an actor with opprobrious character, motives, or desires, which, in turn, affected judgments of a main criterion related to intent, and, in the last step, accounted for ascriptions of intent. These findings support the CCM’s contention that blame-reactions to an actor and outcome influence judgments about criteria, such as intent, that are often considered to be determinants rather than consequences of blame.

KEYWORDS:

• Blame
• intent
• Culpable Control Model of Blame
• causal deviance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We also measured the extent to which participants agreed that Robert wanted to fly the plane to Cuba before it was hijacked; at the moment that Robert was flying the plane to Cuba, he had the desire to go to Cuba, and; that Robert flew the plane to Cuba by his own free choice using 11-point (0 = completely disagree; 10 = completely agree) scales. See Table 3 for descriptive and inferential statistics. Omnibus F-tests were highly significant for all dependent measures, p’s < .001. We conducted planned comparisons to explore these effects. Compared to participants in the control condition, participants who learned that Robert intended to divert the flight prior to being coerced judged him as having more prior desire, momentary desire, and free choice to act. Participants who learned Robert was secretly delighted to divert the flight provided higher ratings of prior desire, momentary desire, and free choice compared to control participants. Those who read that Robert had prior intent to divert the flight to Cuba provided higher ratings of prior desire and free choice relative to those who learned Robert was secretly delighted to divert the flight.