Who's to blame? Counterfactual reasoning and the assignment of blame

Abstract

The role of counterfactual reasoning and the assignment of blame within a context involving product failure, personal injury, and luck was examined. In the first study, it was determined that directing attention to the focal individual in an event increased the perceived mutability of that individual's actions in an exceptional circumstance but not in a common circumstance. Study 2 explored how the availability of different counterfactual alternatives influenced assignments of blame for a negative outcome. The results of this experiment showed that presenting information that directed attention to the focal individual increased the mutability of that individual's actions, which in turn, increased the blame observers assigned to that individual. However, this assertion needs to be qualified; when attention was already focused on the focal individual, directing further attention to that person seemed to have little additional impact. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.