Father, don’t forgive them, for they could have known what they’re doing

Kirfel, Lara; Bunk, Xenia; Zultan, Ro'i; Gerstenberg, Tobias

doi:10.31234/osf.io/a87xm

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 33 publications

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“…For the role of knowledge -or lack thereof -in ascriptions of causation and responsibility, see e.g. ;Kirfel & Lagnado (2021c); Engelmann (2022);Kirfel et al (2023).7 Available under https://aspredicted.org/3T4_JWR.…”

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confidence: 99%

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Güver,

Kneer

2024

Preprint

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Extant research has shown that ordinary causal judgments are sensitive to normative factors. For instance, agents who violate a norm are standardly deemed more causal than norm-conforming agents in identical situations. In this paper, we explore two competing explanations for the Norm Effect: the Responsibility View and the Bias View. According to the former, the Norm Effect arises because ordinary causal judgment is intimately intertwined with moral responsibility. According to the alternative view, the Norm Effect is the result of a blame-driven bias. In a series of five preregistered experiments (N = 2688), we present evidence that predominantly favours the Bias View. In particular, and against predictions made by the Responsibility View, we show that participants deem agents who violate nonpertinent or silly norms – norms that do not relate to the outcome at hand – as more causal, and that this effect cannot be explained in terms of plausible mediators such as the agent’s foreknowledge and desire, or the foreseeability of harm. We close with a discussion regarding the implications of these findings, in as regards the just assessment of proximate cause in the law.

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confidence: 99%

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Güver,

Kneer

2024

Preprint

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The importance of epistemic intentions in ascription of responsibility

Kovacevic,

Bonalumi,

Heintz

2024

Sci Rep

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We investigate how people ascribe responsibility to an agent who caused a bad outcome but did not know he would. The psychological processes for making such judgments, we argue, involve finding a counterfactual in which some minimally benevolent intention initiates a course of events that leads to a better outcome than the actual one. We hypothesize that such counterfactuals can include, when relevant, epistemic intentions. With four vignette studies, we show that people consider epistemic intentions when ascribing responsibility for a bad outcome. We further investigate which epistemic intentions people are likely to consider when building counterfactuals for responsibility ascription. We find that, when an agent did not predict a bad outcome, people ascribe responsibility depending on the reasons behind the agents’ lack of knowledge. People judge agents responsible for the bad outcome they caused when they could have easily predicted the consequences of their actions but did not care to acquire the relevant information. However, when this information was hard to acquire, people are less likely to judge them responsible.

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Father, don’t forgive them, for they could have known what they’re doing

Cited by 2 publications

References 33 publications

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

Causation, Norms, and Cognitive Bias

The importance of epistemic intentions in ascription of responsibility

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