Do Associations Affect Who Gets Blamed?

Abstract

Blame and responsibility are ascribed to individuals who are directly or indirectly involved with harmful actions. Previous literature suggests that individuals are more likely to assign blame to an individual rather than a collective group, when individual actions and intentions are identified. If a group is viewed as a single unit, then blame is placed on the whole group, even if the action is performed by one member. Parents are often blamed for the actions of their children, without being involved in the child’s actions. Knowledge of group entitativity, and how intent and action of members in a group affects distribution of blame has been largely overlooked. The present study examined the difference in the amount of blame assigned to individuals. Specifically, we examined a situation where both individuals are not involved in a harmful action, but one is associated with the harming agent, while the other is not. My results suggest that adults use association to assign blame, indicating that association alone is enough for blame assignment.