Stage 2 Registered Report: How responsibility attributions to self and others relate to outcome ownership in group decisions

Background: Responsibility judgements have important consequences in human society. Previous research focused on how someone's responsibility determines the outcome they deserve, for example, whether they are rewarded or punished. Here, in a pre-registered study (Stage 1 Registered Report: https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16480.2), we investigate the opposite link: How outcome ownership influences responsibility attributions in a social context. Methods: In an online study, participants in a group of three perform a majority vote decision-making task between gambles that can lead to a reward or no reward. Only one group member receives the outcome and participants evaluate their and the other players' responsibility for the obtained outcome. Results: We found that outcome ownership increases responsibility attributions even when the control over an outcome is similar. Moreover, ownership had an effect on the valence bias: participants’ higher responsibility attributions for positive vs negative outcomes was stronger for players who received the outcome. Finally, this effect was more pronounced when people rated their own responsibility as compared to when they were rating another’s player responsibility. Conclusions: The findings of this study reveal how credit attributions can be biased toward particular individuals who receive outcomes as a result of collective work, both when people judge their own and someone else’s responsibility.

Social Roles and Organizational Culture: Attributions of Responsibility and Punitiveness for Financial Crime

A white-collar offender’s role and the organizational culture in which the crime occurs affects subjective evaluations of offender culpability. However, how they affect responsibility attributions and punitiveness is unclear. We examine attribution processes by conducting a factorial experiment to test a proposed model. We test attribution theory derived predictions using innovative methods of scale creation and nonparametric analyses. Participants attribute more responsibility and are more punitive of individuals and offenders in organizational cultures where illegality is atypical. Our five proposed dimensions of responsibility are predictive of responsibility attributions, and path analysis shows offender role and offense environment affect how the five dimensions of responsibility affect attributions. Our findings have implications for criminal justice and adjudication processes and corporate regulation.

Validation of an Attributional and Distributive Justice Mediational Model on the Effects of Surface Acting on Emotional Exhaustion: An Experimental Study

Previous research has shown that surface acting—displaying an emotion that is dissonant with inner feelings—negatively impacts employees’ well-being. However, most studies have neglected the meaning that employees develop around emotional demands requiring surface acting. This study examined how employees’ responsibility attributions of client behavior demanding surface acting influence employees’ emotional exhaustion, and the mediational role of distributive justice in this relationship. Relying on Fairness Theory, it was expected that employees’ responsibility attributions of client behavior demanding emotion regulation would be related to their perceptions of distributive injustice during the service encounter, which in turn would mediate the effects of responsibility attribution on emotional exhaustion. In addition, drawing on the conservation of resources model, we contended that leader support would moderate the impact of distributive injustice on emotional exhaustion. Two scenario-based experiments were conducted. Study 1 (N = 187) manipulated the attribution of responsibility for emotional demands. The findings showed that distributive injustice and emotional exhaustion were higher when responsibility for the surface acting demands was attributed to the client. A bootstrapping mediational analysis confirmed employees’ attributions have an indirect effect on emotional exhaustion through distributive justice. Study 2 (N = 227) manipulated responsibility attribution and leader support. The leader support moderation effect was confirmed.

When company decisions harm or help the environment: the influence of social context and affective state on moral and causal responsibility attributions

Holding companies accountable for their decisions’ environmental side effects becomes increasingly important in the light of current debates on the climate crisis. The present study investigated a young sample’s (n = 925) causal and moral responsibility attributions to a company’s manager and their subordinate employee, who were either young or middle-aged. The agents jointly made a profit-oriented decision which either harmed or helped the environment. Results were analyzed with respect to the valence of the side effect, the agents’ social role, the agents’ age group, and participants’ affective state. We successfully replicated findings from prior studies, showing that more intention and moral responsibility is ascribed to the manager in case of a negative side effect than in case of a positive side effect, and that the manager deserves more blame for negative side effects than the employee, whereas the employee deserves more praise for positive side effects. Additionally, responsibility attributions varied with the agents’ age group, participants’ positive and negative affective state, and participants’ gender. By incorporating these hitherto neglected factors, the study complements existing theories of responsibility attribution and intergroup perception. The findings further highlight the contribution of affective mechanisms as driving factors of responsibility attributions. Combining moral responsibility research, intergroup research, and affective measures promises to foster the understanding of how and to whom people ascribe blame, praise, and causal responsibility for environmental consequences.

Stage 1 Registered Report: How responsibility attributions to self and others relate to outcome ownership in group decisions.

Responsibility judgements have important consequences in human society. Previous research focused on how someone's responsibility determines the outcome they deserve, for example, whether they are rewarded or punished. Here, we investigate the opposite link: How outcome ownership influences responsibility attributions in a social context. Participants in a group of three perform a majority vote decision-making task between gambles that can lead to a reward or no reward. Only one group member receives the outcome and participants evaluate their and the other players' responsibility for the obtained outcome. Two hypotheses are tested: 1) Whether outcome ownership increases responsibility attributions even when the control over an outcome is similar. 2) Whether people's tendency to attribute higher responsibility for positive vs negative outcomes will be stronger for players who received the outcome. The findings of this study may help reveal how credit attributions can be biased toward particular individuals who receive outcomes as a result of collective work.

Episodic and Thematic Framing Effects on the Attribution of Responsibility: The Effects of Personalized and Contextualized News on Perceptions of Individual and Political Responsibility for Causing the Economic Crisis

The effects of episodic and thematic framing on the attribution of responsibility for societal problems have previously been investigated with experimental methods and mostly tested general effects on the public. The current work, instead, investigates episodic framing’s effect by linking a large-scale content analysis to data of a panel survey ( n = 3,270) and assesses the conditionality upon citizens’ individual political ideology. It does so with a focus on perceptions of responsibility for the 2009–2015 economic crisis and within the context of the Netherlands. Results demonstrate that exposure to episodically framed crisis news caused a decline in the attribution of responsibility to individual citizens, whereas thematic framing did not affect this. Framing effects on the attribution of political responsibility, instead, were conditional on political ideology: Episodic framing decreased the attribution of political responsibility, whereas thematic framing increased the attribution of responsibility to political actors, but both effects occurred primarily among citizens with a right-wing political-economic ideology. Accordingly, we add an explanation for the inconsistency of effect directions in previously published research on the effects that episodic and thematic framing may have on responsibility attributions.

Early Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Relationship Satisfaction and Attributions

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected intimate relationships? The existing literature is mixed on the effect of major external stressors on couple relationships, and little is known about the early experience of crises. The current study used 654 individuals involved in a relationship who provided data immediately before the onset of the pandemic (December, 2019) and twice during the early stages of the pandemic (March and April, 2020). Results indicate that relationship satisfaction and causal attributions did not change over time, but responsibility attributions decreased on average. Changes in relationship outcomes were not moderated by demographic characteristics or negative repercussions of the pandemic. There were small moderation effects of relationship coping and conflict during the pandemic, revealing that satisfaction increased and maladaptive attributions decreased in couples with more positive functioning, and satisfaction decreased and maladaptive attributions increased in couples with lower functioning.