Harmful situations, impure people: an attribution asymmetry across moral domains

Alek Chakroff; Liane Young

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.034

Harmful situations, impure people: an attribution asymmetry across moral domains

Cognition. 2015 Mar:136:30-7. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.034. Epub 2014 Dec 6.

Authors

Alek Chakroff¹, Liane Young²

Affiliations

¹ Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States. Electronic address: [email protected].
² Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, United States.

PMID: 25490126
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.034

Abstract

People make inferences about the actions of others, assessing whether an act is best explained by person-based versus situation-based accounts. Here we examine people's explanations for norm violations in different domains: harmful acts (e.g., assault) and impure acts (e.g., incest). Across four studies, we find evidence for an attribution asymmetry: people endorse more person-based attributions for impure versus harmful acts. This attribution asymmetry is partly explained by the abnormality of impure versus harmful acts, but not by differences in the moral wrongness or the statistical frequency of these acts. Finally, this asymmetry persists even when the situational factors that lead an agent to act impurely are stipulated. These results suggest that, relative to harmful acts, impure acts are linked to person-based attributions.

Keywords: Action explanation; Attribution theory; Moral foundation theory; Moral psychology; Morality; Social cognition.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Emotions*
Female
Humans
Intention*
Judgment*
Male
Morals*
Social Perception*