With great(er) power comes great(er) responsibility: an intercultural investigation of the effect of social roles on moral responsibility attribution
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Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Abstract
This paper investigates the relevance of social roles and
hierarchies for the attribution of blame and causation in
five culturally different countries, namely China, Germany,
Poland, the United Arabic Emirates, and the United States
of America. We demonstrate that in all these countries, hierarchical differences between the social roles occupied by two
agents and associated differences in duties to care for others
affect how these two agents are morally and causally judged
when they make a decision together. Agents higher in
a hierarchy are attributed more blame and considered more
causally responsible for an action’s consequences. We also
demonstrate that the degree of this effect depends on culture-specific differences in how hierarchies are conceived
Description
Keywords
Social roles; hierarchies; blame attribution; causal attribution; expectations; Knobe effec