Steve Guglielmo

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.

Can Unintended Side Effects Be Intentional? Resolving a Controversy Over Intentionality and Morality

Can an event’s blameworthiness distort whether people see it as intentional? In controversial recent studies, people judged a behavior’s negative side effect intentional even though the agent allegedly had no desire for it to occur. Such a judgment contradicts the standard assumption that desire is a necessary condition of intentionality, and it raises concerns about assessments of intentionality in legal settings. Six studies examined whether blameworthy events distort intentionality judgments. Studies 1 through 4 show that, counter to recent claims, intentionality judgments are systematically guided by variations in the agent’s desire, for moral and nonmoral actions alike. Studies 5 and 6 show that a behavior’s negative side effects are rarely seen as intentional once people are allowed to choose from multiple descriptions of the behavior. Specifically, people distinguish between “knowingly” and “intentionally” bringing about a side effect, even for immoral actions. These studies suggest that intentionality judgments are unaffected by a behavior’s blameworthiness.

At the Heart of Morality Lies Folk Psychology

Abstract Moral judgments about an agents behavior are enmeshed with inferences about the agents mind. Folk psychology—the system that enables such inferences—therefore lies at the heart of moral judgment. We examine three related folk-psychological concepts that together shape peoples judgments of blame: intentionality, choice, and free will. We discuss peoples understanding and use of these concepts, address recent findings that challenge the autonomous role of these concepts in moral judgment, and conclude that choice is the fundamental concept of the three, defining the core of folk psychology in moral judgment.

Morality Goes Beyond Mind Perception

Gray and colleagues make two central claims in their target article. The first is that people fundamentally understand morality in terms of a moral dyad consisting of an intentionally harming agent and a suffering patient; the second is that morality necessarily involves the process of perceiving minds. Both claims underlie the broader thesis that mind perception is the essence of morality, but the claims are largely orthogonal, so we discuss them separately. Before we proceed, we must clarify what morality means. The authors subsume multiple distinct phenomena under this term, including moral judgments, moral norms, moral domains, and moral actions. They propose that each of these phenomena must be understood in terms of mind perception and dyadic representation. To defend each of these claims would require separate arguments and separate evidence, which the authors don’t provide. Some of the claims are also unlikely to be true; for example, many moral norms refer neither to mind perception nor to the suffering of others (e.g., not to destroy the environment). Our commentary therefore focuses on the claim that appears to have the best prospect of being true and for which the authors mount the most arguments and evidence: that dyadic representation and mind perception fundamentally characterize moral judgments.

Moral judgment as information processing: an integrative review

How do humans make moral judgments about others’ behavior? This article reviews dominant models of moral judgment, organizing them within an overarching framework of information processing. This framework poses two distinct questions: (1) What input information guides moral judgments? and (2) What psychological processes generate these judgments? Information Models address the first question, identifying critical information elements (including causality, intentionality, and mental states) that shape moral judgments. A subclass of Biased Information Models holds that perceptions of these information elements are themselves driven by prior moral judgments. Processing Models address the second question, and existing models have focused on the relative contribution of intuitive versus deliberative processes. This review organizes existing moral judgment models within this framework and critically evaluates them on empirical and theoretical grounds; it then outlines a general integrative model grounded in information processing, and concludes with conceptual and methodological suggestions for future research. The information-processing framework provides a useful theoretical lens through which to organize extant and future work in the rapidly growing field of moral judgment.

Paths to Blame and Paths to Convergence

The past 10 years have seen an unprecedented rise in research on moral psychology. The thoughtful and creative comments on our target article illustrate the vibrancy of the field and the many open questions that are ripe for investigation. Reading these commentaries, we are heartened by the balanced engagement with both theory and evidence and the convergence of perspectives. In discussing some of the major themes in the commentaries we first return to the question of what blame really is and how we can most fruitfully carve out the boundaries between blame and related phenomena. Then we take up the phenomena of victim blame and self-blame as important applications of our model and highlight the important explanatory work that the notion of presets plays. Next, we examine the early and highly consequential process of event detection. Finally we address the greatest challenge to our model: the role of motivational biases in the emergence of blame and how the model accounts for such biases. Throughout, we promote methodological standards we believe must be heeded for significant progress in understanding the psychology of moral judgment.

Questioning the influence of moral judgment

Moral judgment - even the type discussed by Knobe - necessarily relies on substantial information about an agents mental states, especially regarding beliefs and attitudes. Moreover, the effects described by Knobe can be attributed to norm violations in general, rather than moral concerns in particular. Consequently, Knobes account overstates the influence of moral judgment on assessments of mental states and causality.

Information-Acquisition Processes in Moral Judgments of Blame

When people make moral judgments, what information do they look for? Despite its theoretical and practical implications, this question has largely been neglected by prior literature. The recent Path Model of Blame predicts a canonical order in which people acquire information when judging blame. Upon discovering a negative event, perceivers consider information about causality, then intentionality, then (if the event is intentional) reasons or (if the event is unintentional) preventability. Three studies, using two novel paradigms, assessed and found support for these predictions: In constrained (Study 1) and open-ended (Study 2) information-acquisition contexts, participants were most likely, and fastest, to seek information in the canonical order, even when under time pressure (Study 3). These findings indicate that blame relies on a set of information components that are processed in a systematic order. Implications for moral judgment models are discussed, as are potential roles of emotion and motivated reasoning in information acquisition.