Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In this paper, we explored the attribution of causal responsibility in a causal chain of events, where an agent A instructs an intermediate agent B to execute some harmful action which leads to a bad outcome. In Study 1, participants judged B to be more causally responsible, more blameworthy, and more deserving of punishment than A. In Study 2, we explored the effect of proximity on judgments of the two agents by adding a third, subsequent contributing cause, such that B's action no longer directly caused the final outcome. Participants judged both agents A and B to be less causally responsible and deserving of punishment (but not less blameworthy) when they were less proximal to the outcome, and there were no differences in judgments between the two agents. In Study 3, we varied whether each of the two agents (A and B) intended for the final outcome to occur. We find an interaction between role and intent, where participants only mitigated judgments for A when A did not intend for the outcome to occur – regardless of B's intent. We discuss possible explanations for our findings and its implications for moral and legal decision-making.