Asymmetry in Judgments of Moral Blame and Praise

Abstract

Abstract-In cases of wrongdoing, explanations of behavior that point to the relative uncontrollability of an action are often used to reduce moral culpability. For instance, the presence of an uncontrollable impulse has been used to mitigate blame. Accordingly, individuals who commit a crime because of an overwhelming emotional impulse (i.e., a "crime of passion") are often judged less harshly than they would be if they committed the same crime in a rational, deliberate manner. This is common not only in judgments of legal culpability, but also in naive judgments of moral blame. For instance, behaviors that are a result of internal impulses due to mental illness, extreme emotional episodes (as in "sight of adultery" cases), or undue suffering and pain are often considered instances in which the agent is compelled, albeit by a force internal in origin (an "irresistible impulse"), to behave in a way that under "normal" circumstances he or she would not. Control appears compromised under such conditions, and control is considered a necessary condition for the ascription of responsibility in nearly every normative theory of moral blame (Aristotle, trans. 1998;Fincham & Jaspars, 1979;Shaver, 1985;Simester, 1998;Weiner, 1995).Judgments of responsibility are not limited to cases of wrongdoing and blame, however; responsibility for a positive action can make an individual worthy of praise (although most research on moral responsibility has focused on judgments of blame; e.g., Alicke, 2000;Shaver, 1985). The research reported here focuses on how individuals take information about intention and control into account when arriving at judgments of moral praise versus moral blame.In many cases, praise for positive actions is discounted when there is an absence or reduction of control (Weiner & Kukla, 1970). For instance, when determining how much to credit success, individuals calculate the degree of controllability the agent had over the outcome and then use this information to judge the individual's causal responsibility for the outcome before finally determining how much praise he or she deserves (see Weiner, 1995, for a review).However, careful calculations of controllability are not so common when making judgments of moral praise. Impulsive positive acts, such as compulsively donating money (an act that one may regret at a later time), rarely receive treatment analogous to impulsive negative acts. There is thus an apparent asymmetry in judgments of moral blame and moral praise.It would seem rational to hold individuals to the same standards of responsibility regardless of the valence of their actions. According to Kant (1785/1998), for instance, acts that are in some way outside an agent's control, as positive as they might be, do not qualify for true moral evaluation. But an asymmetry may not reflect an underlying bias favoring positive acts. In cases of behaviors that are internally compelled, one way to judge the degree to which an individual is responsible for an action is to determine the agent's second-order desire...

Good Night, and Good Luck: Perspectives on Luck in Management Scholarship

“…This suggests that they discount the blame associated with failure because it is against that person's 'meta-desire'. By contrast, people do not discount the praise associated with success because that is consistent with that person's 'meta-desire' (Pizarro et al, 2003). While this account is theoretically sound, more empirical and experimental work is needed to examine the reasons for such asymmetry, which has potentially important implications for incentive structure and executive accountability.…”

“…Each perspective is closely tied to a particular literature that entails as yet unsolved puzzles that suggest promising directions for future research. For example, while prior studies in psychology uniformly suggest that people tend to mistake luck for skill when evaluating performance differences (Baron & Hershey, 1988;Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982;Langer, 1975;Nisbett & Ross, 1980;Rosenzweig, 2007;Ross & Nisbett, 1991), recent studies point at an asymmetry in the evaluations between successes and failures (Denrell & Liu, 2012;Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey, 2003;Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier, 2015). While people appreciate the role of (bad) luck in failures, they do not necessarily do the same when it comes to explaining success.…”

“…So the bad luck the manager experienced would not have been entirely beyond the manager's control. Another possible inference involves a judgment of the character of the manager based on observed outcomes (Pizarro et al, 2003;Uhlmann et al, 2015). The motivation of moral judgment is ultimately about judging others' moral character -one should avoid interacting with a person who is perceived to be immoral.…”

“…In moral judgment, people tend to discount blame to bad outcome but not praise to good outcome (Pizarro et al, 2003). Similarly, people tend to appreciate the role of bad luck for extreme failures but not the role of good luck in exceptional performances (Denrell & Liu, 2012).…”

Neural evidence for “intuitive prosecution”: The use of mental state information for negative moral verdicts

“…Prior behavioral work suggests that theory of mind may play different roles in moral blame versus praise. First, people assign less blame for impulsive as compared to deliberate harms (e.g., crimes of passion versus premeditated crimes) but do not distinguish between impulsive and deliberate helpful actions (D. Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey, 2003). Second, people judge actions with negative side effects to be more intentional (e.g., supporting a profitable policy that also harms the environment) than actions with positive side effects (Knobe, 2005).…”