Attribution of responsibility to the self and other in children and adults.

Abstract

Heider (19S8, p. 113) describes several attribution criteria used by the naive observer to ascribe responsibility, and he orders them according to the relative contribution of environmental and personal forces to the action outcome. These levels of responsibility, namely, actor-outcome association, causality, foreseeability, intentionality, and justifiability, represent a progression from "primitive," undifferentiated cognitive functioning to highly differentiated, "sophisticated" attribution. In describing his schema, Heider clearly implies that the levels may parallel human developmental stages, and he points out the similarity between Piaget's phases and his criteria of causality and intentionality.Several attempts have been made to test developmental aspects of Heider's theory. Perhaps the most widely cited is that of Shaw and Sulzer (1964), which is prototypic of research in this area and hence will be dealt with in some detail. Stories concerning a boy named Perry were administered to two different age groups (6-to 9-year-olds and college students), who rated his responsibility for the story outcome. Each contained only the minimum information to be classified at one of Heider's levels. Shaw and Sulzer found tenta-

Selecting explanations from causal chains: Do statistical principles explain preferences for voluntary causes?

“…According to Hart and Honoré (1985), such voluntary and nondeliberate actions should be judged as less causal than voluntary and deliberate actions (cf. Fincham & Jaspars, 1979). However, from a social functionalist perspective, both negligent and deliberately malevolent actions are worthy of social sanction (Tetlock, 2002) and may be highlighted in the attribution process (McClure et al, 2007).…”

Marital conflict and children's adjustment: A cognitive-contextual framework.

“…However, children as young as 6 years do distinguish between cause and blame (see Fincham & Jaspars, 1979). Thus, the distinction between attributions of responsibility and blame is not maintained, but these attributions are distinguished from causal attributions.…”

Causal Conceptions in Social Explanation and Moral Evaluation

“…During this period, Heider's conception of responsibility was formalized into inferential stages of association, causality, foreseeability, intentionality, and supererogation (Fincham & Jaspars, 1979; for an earlier test of Heider's model, see Shaw & Sulzer, 1964). Research directed at the primary components of blame (i.e., intent, causation, foresight and foreseeability, mitigating circumstances) generally confirmed rational expectations, including the findings (a) that people are blamed most for intentional harm, followed by unintended but negligent harm, and least by accidental harm (Karlovac & Darley, 1988;Shultz & Wright, 1985;Shultz, Wright, & Schleifer, 1986); (b) that people who cause harm directly are blamed more than those whose influence is more remote ( Johnson & Drobny, 1987); and (c) that people are blamed more for harms they foresaw or should have foreseen than for detrimental outcomes that were unforeseen or unforeseeable (Brewer, 1977;Schlenker, Britt, Pennington, Murphy, & Doherty, 1994).…”