Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Can patterns in language predict people's reasoning about blame and punishment? In this study, we focus on how individual linguistic preferences (agentive vs non-agentive frames) of English, Spanish and Turkish speakers correlate with their judgments of financial liability regarding property damage across events involving intentional agents, accidental outcomes and bystanders. Findings show that individual linguistic preferences predict liability judgments, controlling for event type.