Hazardous machinery:The assignment of agency and blame to robots versus non-autonomous machines

Autonomous robots increasingly perform functions that are potentially hazardous and could cause injury to people (e.g., autonomous driving). When this happens, questions will arise regarding responsibility, although autonomy complicates this issue – insofar as robots seem to control their own behaviour, where would blame be assigned? Across three experiments, we examined whether robots involved in harm are assigned agency and, consequently, blamed. In Studies 1 and 2, people assigned more agency to machines involved in accidents when they were described as ‘autonomous robots’ (vs. ‘machines’), and in turn, blamed them more, across a variety of contexts. In Study 2, robots and machines were assigned similar experience, and we found no evidence for a role of experience in blaming robots over machines. In Study 3, people assigned more agency and blame to a more (vs. less) sophisticated military robot involved in a civilian fatality. Humans who were responsible for robots' safe operation, however, were blamed similarly whether harms involved a robot (vs. machine; Study 1), or a more (vs. less; Study 3) sophisticated robot. These findings suggest that people spontaneously conceptualise robots' autonomy via humanlike agency, and consequently, consider them blameworthy agents

Making sense of misfortune: Deservingness, self-esteem, and patterns of self-defeat.

Drawing on theorizing and research suggesting that people are motivated to view their world as an orderly and predictable place in which people get what they deserve, the authors proposed that (a) random and uncontrollable bad outcomes will lower self-esteem and (b) this, in turn, will lead to the adoption of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. Four experiments demonstrated that participants who experienced or recalled bad (vs. good) breaks devalued their self-esteem (Studies 1a and 1b), and that decrements in self-esteem (whether arrived at through misfortune or failure experience) increase beliefs about deserving bad outcomes (Studies 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b). Five studies (Studies 3–7) extended these findings by showing that this, in turn, can engender a wide array of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors, including claimed self-handicapping ahead of an ability test (Study 3), the preference for others to view the self less favorably (Studies 4–5), chronic self-handicapping and thoughts of physical self-harm (Study 6), and choosing to receive negative feedback during an ability test (Study 7). The current findings highlight the important role that concerns about deservingness play in the link between lower self-esteem and patterns of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

Victims, Vignettes, and Videos: Meta-Analytic and Experimental Evidence that Emotional Impact Enhances the Derogation of Innocent Victims

Research during the 1960s found that observers could be moved enough by an innocent victim’s suffering to derogate their character. However, recent research has produced inconsistent evidence for this effect. We conducted the first meta-analysis (k = 55) of the experimental literature on the victim derogation effect to test the hypothesis that it varies as a function of the emotional impactfulness of the context for observers. We found that studies which employed more impactful contexts (e.g., that were real and vivid) reported larger derogation effects. Emotional impact was, however, confounded by year of appearance, such that older studies reported larger effects and were more impactful. To disentangle the role of emotional impact, in two primary experiments we found that more impactful contexts increased the derogation of an innocent victim. Overall, the findings advance our theoretical understanding of the contexts in which observers are more likely to derogate an innocent victim

Hazardous machinery: the assignment of agency and blame to robots versus non-autonomous machines

Autonomous robots increasingly perform functions that are potentially hazardous and could cause injury to people (e.g., autonomous driving). When this happens, questions will arise regarding responsibility, although autonomy complicates this issue – insofar as robots seem to control their own behaviour, where would blame be assigned? Across three experiments, we examined whether robots involved in harm are assigned agency and, consequently, blamed. In Studies 1 and 2, people assigned more agency to machines involved in accidents when they were described as ‘autonomous robots’ (vs. ‘machines’), and in turn, blamed them more, across a variety of contexts. In Study 2, robots and machines were assigned similar experience, and we found no evidence for a role of experience in blaming robots over machines. In Study 3, people assigned more agency and blame to a more (vs. less) sophisticated military robot involved in a civilian fatality. Humans who were responsible for robots’ safe operation, however, were blamed similarly whether harms involved a robot (vs. machine; Study 1), or a more (vs. less; Study 3) sophisticated robot. These findings suggest that people spontaneously conceptualise robots’ autonomy via humanlike agency, and consequently, consider them blameworthy agents

I Blame Therefore it Was: Rape Myth Acceptance, Victim Blaming, and Memory Reconstruction

We examined the causal order of relationships between rape myth acceptance (RMA), victim blaming, and memory reconstruction. In Study 1, RMA-congruent memory (or alternatively, victim blaming) mediated the relationship between RMA and victim blaming (memory reconstruction). In Study 2, similar relationships emerged between RMA, victim blaming, and memory reconstruction. Although no mediation of RMA occurred in Study 2 independently, a mini meta-analysis of Studies 1 and 2 data replicated both patterns of mediation observed in Study 1. In Study 3, memory accuracy for neutral details of a rape scenario was unrelated to RMA. Manipulating memory to be more (vs. less) RMA congruent had no effect on victim blaming (Study 4), although manipulating perceived victim blameworthiness (Studies 5 and 6) produced RMA-congruent memory reconstruction when the victim was more (vs. less) blameworthy. The results suggest that, via victim blaming, RMA motivates a memory reconstruction process that explains and justifies victim blaming after the fact

Someone is pulling the strings: hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories

We hypothesized that belief in conspiracy theories would be predicted by the general tendency to attribute agency and intentionality where it is unlikely to exist. We further hypothesized that this tendency would explain the relationship between education level and belief in conspiracy theories, where lower levels of education have been found to be associated with higher conspiracy belief. In Study 1 (N=202) participants were more likely to agree with a range of conspiracy theories if they also tended to attribute intentionality and agency to inanimate objects. As predicted, this relationship accounted for the link between education level and belief in conspiracy theories. We replicated this finding in Study 2 (N=330), whilst taking into account beliefs in paranormal phenomena. These results suggest that education may undermine the reasoning processes and assumptions that are reflected in conspiracy belief

Why wealthier people think people are wealthier, and why it matters: From social sampling to redistributive attitudes

Two studies provide evidence that social sampling processes (Galesic, Olsson & Reiskamp, 2012) lead wealthier people to oppose redistributive policies. In samples of American Internet users, wealthier participants reported higher levels of wealth in their social circles (Studies 1a, 1b). This was associated, in turn, with estimates of higher mean wealth in the wider US population, greater perceived fairness of the economic status quo, and opposition to redistributive policies. Furthermore, results from a large-scale nationally representative New Zealand survey revealed that low levels of neighbourhood-level socioeconomic deprivation –an objective index of wealth within participants’ social circles – mediated the relation between income and satisfaction with the economic status quo (Study 2). These findings held controlling for relevant variables including political orientation and perceived self-interest. Social-structural inequalities appear to combine with social sampling processes to shape the different political attitudes of wealthier and poorer people

Immanent justice reasoning: Theory, research, and current directions.

Immanent justice reasoning involves causally attributing a deserved outcome to someone’s prior moral deeds or character, even when such a causal connection is physically implausible. This chapter describes a body of work showing that immanent justice reasoning is (a) motivated, in part, by the need to construe outcomes as deserved; (b) driven by intuitive more than controlled mental processes; and (c) more openly expressed among individuals who believe in supernatural phenomena. This review also documents several additional lines of inquiry exploring key assumptions about the nature, origins, and functions of immanent justice reasoning, including immanent justice reasoning for self-relevant fortuitous outcomes, the social-communicative function of immanent justice reasoning, and the interplay between immanent justice and normative causal reasoning. Early research portrayed immanent justice reasoning as unique to children, but the chapter identifies several conditions under which it is predictably displayed by adults. Immanent justice reasoning serves important psychological functions in adulthood, and is underpinned by reasoning processes and metaphysical assumptions that are not put away when children become adults

Immanent Justice Reasoning

Immanent justice reasoning involves causally attributing a deserved outcome to someone’s prior moral deeds or character, even when such a causal connection is physically implausible. This chapter describes a body of work showing that immanent justice reasoning is (a) motivated, in part, by the need to construe outcomes as deserved; (b) driven by intuitive more than controlled mental processes; and (c) more openly expressed among individuals who believe in supernatural phenomena. This review also documents several additional lines of inquiry exploring key assumptions about the nature, origins, and functions of immanent justice reasoning, including immanent justice reasoning for self-relevant fortuitous outcomes, the social-communicative function of immanent justice reasoning, and the interplay between immanent justice and normative causal reasoning. Early research portrayed immanent justice reasoning as unique to children, but this chapter identifies several conditions under which it is predictably displayed by adults. Immanent justice reasoning serves important psychological functions in adulthood, and is underpinned by reasoning processes and metaphysical assumptions that are not put away when children become adults

Derogating innocent victims: The effects of relative versus absolute character judgments

Drawing on just-world theory and research into the suppression and justification of prejudice, we propose that the use of relative compared to absolute measures of an innocent victim’s character enables observers to derogate the victim without transparently violating social norms or values proscribing derogation. In Study 1, we found that positive feelings expressed toward victims mirrored social norms proscribing negative reactions toward them. In Studies 2a, 2b and 3, innocent victims were evaluated more negatively when ratings were made using relative (i.e., compared to evaluations of the average student or the self) versus absolute scales. In Study 4, this effect of scale type on derogation was stronger for people higher in the motivation to avoid prejudiced reactions to victims. Relative judgments seem to allow individuals to enact their counter-normative motivation to derogate the victim under the cover of ambiguity and ostensibly rationally motivated social comparison processes