The Accountability of Conduct: A Social Psychological Analysis.

Hunter, Christopher; Semin, Gün R.; Manstead, Antony Stephen Reid

doi:10.2307/2070862

Cited by 29 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…These definitions allow moral agency to be ascribed to humans, of course, but also to be attributed in limited ways to groups (e.g., corporations, nations; Knobe & Prinz, 2008) and sometimes even to animals (Shapiro, 2006) or mechanical agents, such as robots or computers (Floridi & Sanders, 2004). In the psychological study of perceptions of morality, moral agency has been assessed with measures of perceived causality, intentionality, morality, responsibility, and praise or blameworthiness (e.g., Alicke, 2000;Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Bloom, 2003;Semin & Manstead, 1983;Shaver, 1985;Weiner, 1995).…”

Section: Classical Categories Of Moral Agent and Moral Patientmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.

Gray¹,

Wegner²

2009

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

422

466

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Moral agency is the capacity to do right or wrong, whereas moral patiency is the capacity to be a target of right or wrong. Through 7 studies, the authors explored moral typecasting-an inverse relation between perceptions of moral agency and moral patiency. Across a range of targets and situations, good- and evil-doers (moral agents) were perceived to be less vulnerable to having good and evil done to them. The recipients of good and evil (moral patients), in turn, were perceived as less capable of performing good or evil actions. Moral typecasting stems from the dyadic nature of morality and explains curious effects such as people's willingness to inflict greater pain on those who do good than those who do nothing.

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Section: Classical Categories Of Moral Agent and Moral Patientmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.

Gray¹,

Wegner²

2009

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

422

466

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, research has examined the role of accountability in social perception, attitudes, judgment accuracy, organizational behavior, negotiations, and educational curricula. One reason for this remarkable degree of empirical attention is the potential of accountability to serve as a rule for enforcing vital societal norms (Semin & Manstead, 1983). As Lerner and Tetlock (1999) have asserted, accountability is a variable that bridges the individual and the institutional or social structural level of analysis.…”

Section: Accountability and Self-enhancementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accountability as a deterrent to self-enhancement: The search for mechanisms.

Sedikides¹,

Herbst²,

Hardin³

et al. 2002

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

144

126

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United States Military Academy at West Point Although self-enhancement is linked to psychological benefits, it is also associated with personal and interpersonal liabilities (e.g., excessive risk taking, social exclusion). Hence, structuring social situations that prompt people to keep their self-enhancing beliefs in check can confer personal and interpersonal advantages. The authors examined whether accountability can serve this purpose. Accountability was defined as the expectation to explain, justify, and defend one's self-evaluations (grades on an essay) to another person ("audience"). Experiment 1 showed that accountability curtails self-enhancement. Experiment 2 ruled out audience concreteness and status as explanations for this effect. Experiment 3 demonstrated that accountability-induced self-enhancement reduction is due to identifiability. Experiment 4 documented that identifiability decreases self-enhancement because of evaluation expectancy and an accompanying focus on one's weaknesses. Many, if not most, people regard themselves as slightly superior to others on positive dimensions that are important to them. For example, people rate themselves as above-average spouses and professionals (e.g., teachers, managers). They consider themselves more moral, trustworthy, and physically attractive than others. Perhaps because they overestimate the control they have over their lives, people believe that, compared with others, they are happier, are likely to be healthier and live longer, and are more likely to experience positive life events (e.g., a fulfilling occupation, a good marriage, winning the lottery) but less likely to experience negative life events (e.g., a road accident, chronic disease, unemployment). In fact, people exalt their important attributes even when they evaluate themselves from the perspective of their peers. Such self-superiority beliefs (i.e., self-enhancement) are well documented (Alicke, 1985; Brown, 1986; Robins & John, 1997a; Weinstein, 1980). These beliefs are maintained through several processes and strategies, such as idiosyncratic (i.e., favorable to the self) definitions of traits and skills (Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989), better memory for feedback referring to one's strengths rather than weaknesses (Sedikides & Green, 2000a), taking personal credit for success but disavowing blame for failure (K. W. Campbell & Sedikides, 1999), affirmation of a self-domain that is unrelated to the self-domain currently under threat (Steele, 1988), psychological distancing from others (Schimel, Pyszczynski, Greenberg, O'Mahen, & Arndt, 2000), withholding of information that will likely improve others (Pemberton & Sedikides, 2001), and comparison with less fortunate others (Wills, 1981). Self-enhancement is associated with short-term psychological benefits, such as a relatively high level of positive affect and self-esteem, as well as persistence in challenging tasks, effective coping with negative health outcomes, and resiliency in the face of

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“…Transgressors often have an opportunity to reply to, and perhaps mitigate, the moral criticism (McKenna, 2012;Semin & Manstead, 1983). Several researchers have catalogued the range of these mitigating replies in human social interactions, including denial and excuses, apology and amends (McGraw, 1991;Schönbach, 1980;Semin & Manstead, 1983), but initial research on robot mitigation strategies been somewhat inconsistent (Esterwood & Robert, 2022). In our studies we focus on justifications, which have received little attention in the human-robot interaction domain.…”

Section: Moral Responses To Artificial Agentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Robot’s Justifications, but not Explanations, Mitigate People’s Moral Criticism and Preserve Their Trust

Malle,

Phillips

2023

Preprint

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In two experiments we investigate people’s moral criticism (blame) of social robots that violate norms, as well as the impact of the robot’s justification of its norm violation on people’s blame and trust. We found consistent evidence of a “disobedience” effect—greater blame for robot decisions that deviated from what participants suggested the robot should do. Further, we found that justifications differentially affected blame and trust. They mitigated blame only for certain decisions but raised trust regardless of the decision. Justifications may signal that robots are morally trustworthy even if they made a specific decision that deserved blame.

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The Accountability of Conduct: A Social Psychological Analysis.

Cited by 29 publications

References 0 publications

Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.

Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.

Accountability as a deterrent to self-enhancement: The search for mechanisms.

A Robot’s Justifications, but not Explanations, Mitigate People’s Moral Criticism and Preserve Their Trust

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