Conceptual structure and social functions of behavior explanations: beyond person--situation attributions

The traditional approach to studying behavior explanations involves treating them as either person causes or situation causes and assessing them by using rating scales. An analysis of people's free-response behavior explanations reveals, however, that the conceptual distinctions people use in their explanations are more complex and sophisticated than the person-situation dichotomy suggests. The authors, therefore, introduce a model of the conceptual structure of folk behavior explanations (the network of concepts and assumptions on which explanations are based) and test it in 4 studies. The modes and features of behavior explanations within this conceptual structure also have specific social functions. In 2 additional studies, the authors demonstrate that people alter distinct features of their explanations when pursuing particular impression-management goals and that listeners make inferences about explainers' goals on the basis of these features.     

The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: a (surprising) meta-analysis

The actor-observer hypothesis (E. E. Jones & R. E. Nisbett, 1971) states that people tend to explain their own behavior with situation causes and other people's behavior with person causes. Widely known in psychology, this asymmetry has been described as robust, firmly established, and pervasive. However, a meta-analysis on 173 published studies revealed average effect sizes from d = -0.016 to d = 0.095. A moderator analysis showed that the asymmetry held only when the actor was portrayed as highly idiosyncratic, when hypothetical events were explained, when actor and observer were intimates, or when free-response explanations were coded. In addition, the asymmetry held for negative events, but a reverse asymmetry held for positive events. This valence effect may indicate a self-serving pattern in attribution, but across valence, no actor-observer asymmetry exists.     

Judging mens rea: the tension between folk concepts and legal concepts of intentionality

Concepts such as intention, motive, or forethought have generated a great deal of doubt, dispute, and confusion in legal decision making. Here we argue for an empirically based strategy of defining and using such mens rea concepts. Instead of the standard approach of settling these concepts by theoretical argument and the debaters' own intuitions, we rely on social psychological research to determine the meaning and significance of folk concepts concerning mens rea. We demonstrate the reliable and systematic use of people's concept of intentionality, contrast it with the bewildering variety of related legal concepts, and apply the folk model of intentionality to debated distinctions between intention and intentionality, desire and intention, and belief and intention. This folk-conceptual approach promises clarity of mens rea concepts and a reconciliation of the legal and layperson's view of human behavior.     

How people explain actions performed by groups and individuals.

The authors explore whether people explain intentional actions performed by groups differently from actions performed by individuals, A theoretical framework is offered that distinguishes between 2 modes of explanation: the agent's reasons (beliefs or desires in light of which the agent decided to act) and causal histories of reasons (CHRs; factors that preceded and brought about the agent's reasons). The authors develop the hypothesis that people use more CHR explanations when explaining group actions than when explaining individual actions. Study 1 demonstrates this asymmetry. Studies 2 and 3 explore 2 necessary conditions for the asymmetry: that the group be perceived as an aggregate of individual actors rather thin as a jointly acting group and that explainers have general information available about the group. Discussion focuses on people's perception of groups as entities and agents.     

A Theory of Blame

We introduce a theory of blame in five parts. Part 1 addresses what blame is: a unique moral judgment that is both cognitive and social, regulates social behavior, fundamentally relies on social cognition, and requires warrant. Using these properties, we distinguish blame from such phenomena as anger, event evaluation, and wrongness judgments. Part 2 offers the heart of the theory: the Path Model of Blame, which identifies the conceptual structure in which blame judgments are embedded and the information processing that generates such judgments. After reviewing evidence for the Path Model, we contrast it with alternative models of blame and moral judgment (Part 3) and use it to account for a number of challenging findings in the literature (Part 4). Part 5 moves from blame as a cognitive judgment to blame as a social act. We situate social blame in the larger family of moral criticism, highlight its communicative nature, and discuss the darker sides of moral criticism. Finally, we show how the Path Model of Blame can bring order to numerous tools of blame management, including denial, justification, and excuse.     

A Strawsonian look at desert

P.F. Strawson famously argued that reactive attitudes and ordinary moral practices justify moral assessments of blame, praise, and punishment. Here we consider whether Strawson's approach can illuminate the concept of desert. After reviewing standard attempts to analyze this concept and finding them lacking, we suggest that to deserve something is to justifiably receive a moral assessment in light of certain criteria – in particular, eligibility criteria (a subject's properties that make the subject principally eligible for moral assessments) and assignment criteria (particulars about the subject, act, and circumstances that justify assessments such as blame in a particular case). Strawson's analysis of the ordinary attitudes and practices of moral assessment hints at these criteria but does not unequivocally ground a notion of desert. Following Strawson's general naturalistic approach, we show that recent psychological research on folk concepts and practices regarding freedom, moral responsibility, and blame illuminates how people actually arrive at moral assessments, thus revealing the very eligibility criteria and assignment criteria we suggest ground a concept of desert. By pushing the Strawsonian line even further than Strawson did, by empirically investigating actual moral practice and folk understandings, we can illuminate desert and lend credence to Strawson's general anti-metaphysical position.     

Attention to behavioral events during interaction: two actor-observer gaps and three attempts to close them

In social interactions, people must pay attention to many behavioral events unfolding in themselves and the other person-events that can be observable or unobservable, intentional or unintentional. Three studies explored how people distribute their attention to these different event types and, as a result, build up representations of self and partner during the interaction. Relying on basic principles of attention, the authors predicted 2 actor-observer gaps: Actors pay more attention to unobservable events and less to observable events than do observers, and actors pay more attention to unintentional events and less to intentional events than do observers. Study 1 documents both gaps. Studies 2 and 3 explore factors that might close the gaps, such as relational intimacy and empathy. Implications of these results for the role of attention in attribution and interpersonal behavior are discussed.