Judgments Of Responsibility Research Articles

“It’s Their Responsibility, Not Ours”

Abstract. In many countries, there is a gap in academic performance between native-born students and students with certain immigrant backgrounds. Based on ultimate attribution error theory, we examined the stereotypes and causal attributions that German student teachers use to account for immigrants’ underperformance. By including both Turkish-origin and Italian-origin migrants, we assessed whether these judgments are group-specific. A pilot study (N = 70) showed that Turkish-origin migrants were viewed more negatively than either Germans or Italian-origin migrants. Studies 1 (N = 65) and 2 (N = 54) showed that negative stereotypes moderated judgments of internal responsibility for both immigrant groups. Study 2 also showed that negative stereotypes moderated external attributions for the underperformance of Turkish-origin, but not Italian-origin, migrants.

On the unpredictability of suicide

Suicide has become one of the main reasons of professional liability proceedings for psychiatrists. It is a widespread belief that suicide is a systematic expression of mental illness and that, as for many diseases is preventable by appropriate means. There is a lack of research data that can enable the identification of clinically useful variables to identify suicide risk, even in people who have already made a suicide attempt. Unfortunately, these convictions have led and lead to judgments of professional responsibility for psychiatrists that are not based on scientific data, but on social needs related to feelings of frustration and helplessness that develop after a suicide and by the urge to compensate in some way the family of suicide victim. Suicide is too complex a phenomenon to be reported to a causality beyond any reasonable certainty as instead required by the criminal law, neither can be faced with a progressive patients loss of freedom of our patients.

Bullying of the Manager and Employees' Prosocial or Antisocial Behaviors: Impacts on Equity, Responsibility Judgments, and Witnesses' Help‐Giving

AbstractThis article aims at studying how bullying acts, revictimization, and behaviors' targets influence responsibility judgments of witnesses bullying and determine help decision. According to the literature, help‐giving has various determinants such as gravity of the bullying acts and behaviors of the perpetrators and responsibility attributed to the perpetrators and to the victims often depend on behaviors. With vignettes, we examined the influence of bullying acts, victim's prosocial or antisocial behavior at work, and revictimization on equity judgments, perceived responsibility of perpetrators and victims, and help‐giving. Eight vignettes of bullying at work were submitted to 205 participants. The results showed that the situation was judged less equitable, the victim less responsible, the perpetrator more responsible, and the intention of help increased (a) when the perpetrator's acts were serious and (b) when the bullied had emitted a prosocial behavior versus an antisocial one.

Rhetorical Tactics to Influence Responsibility Judgments: Account Giving in Banks Presidents’ Letters During the Financial Market Crisis

This content analysis investigates bank presidents’ letters in the aftermath of the financial market crisis (2007/2008). We posit that managers use accounts as a rhetorical device in order to influence responsibility judgments of stakeholders. Therefore, we draw on attribution theory, self-presentational theories and research on account giving to develop our hypotheses. From our model of responsibility judgment, we infer how banks will react to their financial performance after the financial market crisis (2007/2008). We test this with a sample built from 91 U.S. and European banks, which were all severely hit by this crisis. Our results indicate that bank managers use accounts as linguistic devices to influence the responsibility judgments of stakeholders: Refusals and to relativize are used to influence their situational perception, concessions and excuses target on locus and controllability perceptions, and initiatives and outlooks affect stability perceptions.

The interplay of students’ and parents’ responsibility judgements in the school context and their associations with student motivation and achievement

Due to the important motivational implications of an individual’s sense of responsibility, this paper studies the interplay of 271 secondary school students’ and 101 of their parents’ responsibility ascriptions for student learning and their relations to student motivation and achievement. Three dimensions of responsibility were identified; responsibility for the learning process, student achievement and establishing a supportive social network. Students’ sense of personal responsibility was related to their ascriptions of responsibility to parents and teachers and their own subject-specific motivation and school achievement. All of these were found related to parents’ responsibility judgements and expectancies. These findings underscore the importance of the school context for fostering students’, teachers’ and parents’ sense of responsibility for ensuring students’ academic success.

Willingness to Sacrifice for the Environment: A Comparison of Environmental Consciousness in China, Japan and South Korea

This paper aims to compare and clarify people’s environmental consciousness in China, Japan and South Korea, from a perspective of willingness to sacrifice (WTS) for the environment. Analytical results derived from cross-national survey data indicate that the Chinese, especially Beijing citizens, tend to hold positive WTS, the Japanese tend to hold negative WTS, and South Koreans are located between Chines and Japanese. Based on the revised norm-activation theory, environmental anxiety and environmental responsibility judgments are proposed to explain the formation of WTS on a national level in this study. Positive relationship between WTS and environment anxiety is verified in surveyed regions. However, influence of environmental responsibility judgments to WTS differs from area to area. Generally speaking, people who ascribe the most important environmental responsibility to citizens or corporations are more likely to form positive WTS than those who ascribe it to the government. In addition, the influence of demographic factors to the formation of WTS is also clarified and the attributive features of individuals who are inclined to sacrifice for the environment are clarified on a national level.

Pérdida de investidura: Representación de la “muerte política” y desconocimiento de los derechos fundamentales

La Corte Constitucional nos acerca al concepto diciendo que (…) la pérdida de investidura, constituye un verdadero juicio de responsabilidad política que culmina con la imposición de una sanción de carácter jurisdiccional, de tipo disciplinario que castiga la transgresión al código de conducta intachable de los congresistas, (…) equiparable por sus efectos y gravedad, a la destitución de los altos funcionarios públicos (…). (Corte Constitucional, Sentencia C319 de 1994) Podemos entender, entonces, que la pérdida de investidura es una acción pública; que constituye un juicio de responsabilidad política, dado que de su resultado dependerá el ejercicio de un derecho político; como lo es el de ser elegido, de carácter jurisdiccional de tipo disciplinario; puesto que lo adelanta un órgano jurisdiccional, y se evalúa el actuar del congresista para determinar si es o no adecuado, y en el trámite que se le dé a dicha acción deben observarse a plenitud los postulados del debido proceso, consagrados en el Artículo 29 constitucional, más aún cuando es la manifestación de la potestad sancionatoria del Estado, la cual debe estar sometida a las garantías del debido proceso y de legalidad de la falta y de la sanción. Al analizar las características de la Perdida de Investidura encontramos que “Limita o reduce algunos derechos fundamentales previstos en la Constitución como el de elegir o ser elegido, el cual no puede ser sometido a restricciones indebidas”. Por lo tanto, además de comprender el camino de la institución, sus efectos y consecuencias, pretendemos entender si en su aplicación se vulneran o desconocen derechos fundamentales como el debido proceso, la doble instancia y, en consecuencia, la sanción vitalicia que no pude denominarse de otra forma que “muerte política”.

Judgments of Organization Responsibility: Psychological Essentialism and Mind-State Inference as Determinants of Blame

Judgments of Organization Responsibility: Psychological Essentialism and Mind-State Inference as Determinants of Blame

Ethical copula, negation, and responsibility judgments

Prior’s arguments for and against seeing ‘ought’ as a copula and his considerations about normative negation are applied to the case of responsibility judgments. My thesis will be that responsibility judgments, even though often expressed by using the verb ‘to be’, are in fact normative judgments. This is shown by analyzing their negation, which parallels the behavior of ought negation.

Judgments of Responsibility Versus Accountability

We proposed and found that employees’ judgments of responsibility and accountability are distinct but positively related constructs. Using attribution theory for responsibility judgments and lay dispositionalism for accountability judgments, we hypothesized that employees hold others more responsible (i.e., causal) and accountable (i.e., punishable) than they hold themselves for the same workplace mistakes. Independent mean differences within a sample of 286 working adults revealed that people held others more responsible but not more accountable than they held themselves. Post hoc analyses revealed a counterintuitive finding. Counter to what theory would predict, as workplace mistake seriousness increased the variation between self-judgement and other-judgment decreased. Implications and future directions for accountability research are discussed.

Perceived moral responsibility for attitude-based discrimination.

This research investigated judgements of moral responsibility for attitude-based discrimination, testing whether a wrongdoer's mental states - awareness and foresight - are central determinants of culpability. Participants read about and judged a target person who was described as consciously egalitarian, but harbouring negative attitudes that lead him to treat African Americans unfairly. Two studies showed that participants ascribed greater moral responsibility for discrimination when the target was aware of having negative attitudes than when he was unaware. Surprisingly, moral judgements were equally harsh towards a target who was explicitly aware that his bias could influence his behaviour as a target who was not. To explain this result, a second study showed that the path from awareness to moral responsibility was mediated by perceptions that the target had an obligation to foresee his discriminatory behaviour, but not by perceptions of the target's actual foresight. These results suggest that bias awareness influences moral judgements of those who engage in attitude-based discrimination because it obligates them to foresee harmful consequences. The current findings demonstrate that moral judges consider not just descriptive facts, but also normative standards regarding a wrongdoer's mental states.

The Meaning and Measurement of Responsibility Attributions

This article advances a theory of responsibility attributions in which such judgments are rooted in considerations of intensity and comparability. Informed by insights from the study of attitudinal ambivalence, the article contributes to the attribution literature in three important ways. First, we propose a new technique for measuring responsibility judgments, one that explicitly incorporates information about intensity and comparability into a single scale. Second, from a methodological standpoint, we demonstrate that our new measures of comparative responsibility ratings have greater construct validity than traditional ratings-based measures and outperform them as predictors of political evaluations. More substantively, we show that comparative responsibility ratings are politically consequential and strongly influenced presidential approval, presidential vote choice, and congressional vote choice in the United States during the 2012 elections.

Experimental philosophy of actual and counterfactual free will intuitions.

Five experiments suggested that everyday free will and moral responsibility judgments about some hypothetical thought examples differed from free will and moral responsibility judgments about the actual world. Experiment 1 (N=106) showed that free will intuitions about the actual world measured by the FAD-Plus poorly predicted free will intuitions about a hypothetical person performing a determined action (r=.13). Experiments 2-5 replicated this result and found the relations between actual free will judgments and free will judgments about hypothetical determined or fated actions (rs=.22-.35) were much smaller than the differences between them (ηp(2)=.2-.55). These results put some pressure on theoretical accounts of everyday intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility.

The use of neuroscientific evidence in Canadian criminal proceedings.

This article addresses the question of how neuroscientific evidence is currently used in the Canadian criminal justice system, with a view to identifying the main contexts in which this evidence is raised, as well as to discern the impact of this evidence on judgements of responsibility, dangerousness, and treatability. The most general Canadian legal database was searched for cases in the five-year period between 2008 and 2012 in which neuroscientific evidence related to the responsibility and recidivism risk of criminal offenders was considered. Canadian courts consider neuroscientific evidence of many types, particularly evidence of prenatal alcohol exposure, traumatic brain injury, and neuropsychological testing. The majority of the cases are sentencing decisions, which is useful given that it offers an opportunity to observe how judges wrestle with the tension that evidence of diminished capacity due to brain damage tends to reduce moral blameworthiness, while it also tends to increase perceptions of risk and dangerousness. This so-called double-edged sword of the biological explanation of criminal behavior was reflected in this study, and raises questions about whether and when the pursuit of such evidence is advisable from the defense perspective.

Construal level and free will beliefs shape perceptions of actors' proximal and distal intent.

Two components of lay observers' calculus of moral judgment are proximal intent (the actor's mind is focused on performing the action) and distal intent (the actor's mind is focused on the broader goal). What causes observers to prioritize one form of intent over the other? The authors observed whether construal level (Studies 1–2) and beliefs about free will (Studies 3–4) would influence participants' sensitivity to the actor's proximal vs. distal intent. In four studies, participants read scenarios in which the actor's proximal and distal intent were independently manipulated. In Study 1, when only distal intent was present in the actor's mind, participants rated the psychologically distant actor more responsible than the psychologically near actor. In Study 2, when only distal intent was in the actor's mind, participants with a chronic high level of action identification rated the actor more responsible than did those with a low level of action identification. In both studies, when only proximal intent was in the actor's mind, construal level did not predict judgments of responsibility. In Study 3, when only proximal intent was present in the actor's mind, the more participants believed in free will, the more they rated the actor responsible. When only distal intent was in the actor's mind, free will belief did not influence ratings of responsibility. In Study 4, the same pattern emerged when free will/determinism beliefs were manipulated and the actor performed a positive (life-saving) act. The authors discuss how these results shed new light on the literatures on moral reasoning and psycho-legal theory.

Workplace Bullying and Victims’ Prosocial or Antisocial Behaviors: What Are the Effects on Equity, Responsibility Judgments, and Help Giving?

According to Weiner’s model, help giving has various determinants such as social and individual causes, affective reactions, and responsibility. The aim of this study was (1) to examine the influence of bullying acts, the victim’s behavior at work, and revictimization on equity judgments and the perceived responsibility of perpetrators and victims; and (2) to test the determinants of help decisions. Twelve vignettes of bullying at work submitted to 133 participants varied according to the severity of bullying, the victim’s pro- or antisocial behaviors, and the victim’s antecedents. The results showed that the situation was judged less equitable, the victim less responsible, and the perpetrator more responsible, and the intention of help was increased, (1) when the perpetrator’s acts were serious, and (2) when the bullied person had shown prosocial behavior versus antisocial behavior. The help increased more (1) when the perpetrator’s acts were harmful and (2) when the victim had shown prosocial behaviors.

Exploring Carers' Judgements of Responsibility and Control in Response to the Challenging Behaviour of People with Intellectual Disabilities.

This study examines Weiner's recent cognitive emotional model which makes a distinction between judgements of control and responsibility and emphasizes the moderation of control by 'mitigating' factors. In response to four vignettes describing two conditions of control (high or low) and mitigating factors (present or absent), questionnaires rating judgements of responsibility and emotional responses (anger and sympathy) were completed by 52 care staff. Analysis of the data for sympathy demonstrated that attributions of control were moderated by communication ability and that the effect of control upon sympathy was mediated by the judgement of responsibility. The data offer tentative support Weiner's account of the mitigation of control attributions in making responsibility judgements and their subsequent effects on emotional responses. Implications for research and clinical work are discussed.

Do the right thing: The assumption of optimality in lay decision theory and causal judgment

Human decision-making is often characterized as irrational and suboptimal. Here we ask whether people nonetheless assume optimal choices from other decision-makers: Are people intuitive classical economists? In seven experiments, we show that an agent’s perceived optimality in choice affects attributions of responsibility and causation for the outcomes of their actions. We use this paradigm to examine several issues in lay decision theory, including how responsibility judgments depend on the efficacy of the agent’s actual and counterfactual choices (Experiments 1–3), individual differences in responsibility assignment strategies (Experiment 4), and how people conceptualize decisions involving trade-offs among multiple goals (Experiments 5–6). We also find similar results using everyday decision problems (Experiment 7). Taken together, these experiments show that attributions of responsibility depend not only on what decision-makers do, but also on the quality of the options they choose not to take.

The Relationship between Diabetes Self-efficacy and Diabetes Self-care in American Indians and Alaska Natives.

The objective of the present study was to investigate how American Indian/Alaska Natives' (AI/ANs') attitudes and beliefs might influence how they experience and manage diabetes, with particular attention paid to their attitudes about disease causality. An AI/AN sample of 119 participants completed an anonymous survey that examined the impact of judgments of personal responsibility for disease onset, anger, self-blame, social support, and diabetes self-efficacy on diabetes self-care. Our primary model was tested using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that, while many participants considered themselves almost entirely responsible for their disease onset, this judgment did not predict anger. Anger was strongly related to self-blame and social support, while diabetes self-efficacy was strongly related to diabetes self-care. These psychosocial variables accounted for 70% of the variability in self-reported disease management.

The Effects of a Social Context on Reputational Judgments of Corporate Social Responsibility

The Effects of a Social Context on Reputational Judgments of Corporate Social Responsibility