Responsibility Attribution

How Does One Know if Another is Responsible?

If an earthquake leveled a house, then it is unlikely that a particular individual will be held responsible. A responsibility attribution presumes that a person brought about the outcome. But responsibility implies more than an attribution to a person. It also embraces a guilty mind and the belief that it could have been otherwise. Hence, although effort and ability are person characteristics, lack of effort resulting in failure elicits judgments of responsibility, whereas this is not the case given lack of aptitude as the cause, which is presumed not to be subject to volitional control and change. In a similar manner, obesity caused by love of eating or HIV/AIDS caused by promiscuous sexual behavior gives rise to responsibility ascriptions, whereas obesity because of a thyroid disorder or HIV/AIDS traced to a transfusion with contaminated blood results in beliefs of nonresponsibility. The former are “sinners,” the latter are “sick.”

These can be difficult judgments, prone to influence by biases and affected by a variety of information. For example, situational causes of behavior tend to be underestimated in comparison with personal causes, so that an individual may be blamed for a car accident on a rainy day because the severity of the road conditions is underestimated (what is called discounting).

Judgments of responsibility embrace complex issues at the intersection of law, philosophy, and psychology, and scholars with these interests often pose odd dilemmas to tease apart the essence of responsibility. Consider the following: Robber #1 is about to rob a bank when Robber #2 enters that bank, holds a gun to the head of Robber #1, and demands that he help rob the bank or else he will be shot. Is Robber #1 responsible for the robbery? Similarly, when a severely abused woman intentionally kills her abusive spouse when he is asleep, is she fully responsible for this action? Judgments of responsibility are lessened given mitigating circumstances, such as mental state at the time of the behavior. Hence, the abused spouse is likely to receive a more lenient sentence than is one who has not been victimized.

Consequences of Responsibility Beliefs

Responsibility attributions affect emotions. Some psychologists contend that feeling is directly determined by thinking, that is, what is thought determines what is felt. The task for this group of emotion theorists is to specify the key thoughts linked with emotions and identify the feelings they generate. Perceived responsibility for an aversive event gives rise to anger and related emotions such as annoyance. For example, you are mad when a roommate fails to clean up the kitchen or when a friend misses an appointment. Furthermore, the greater the perceived responsibility is, the more intense the anger is. Hence, an intentionally missed appointment gives rise to greater anger than does one forgotten (an unintentional cause revealing a less guilty mind). On the other hand, nonresponsibility for a [Page 754]negative event or state gives rise to sympathy and pity. People feel sorry for the mentally handicapped person who cannot complete an academic task and for the physically handicapped individual who cannot compete in an athletic event. Thus, responsibility judgments provide one key to thinking–feeling linkages.

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