Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Prior work has shown that positively intentioned agents are held more responsible, causal, and blameworthy for subsequentbad outcomes than negatively intentioned agents are held for good outcomes. Across a series of studies, we investigatethe underlying expectations that produce this asymmetry. We find that, in in the absence of explicit information about theaction performed, actions of positively intentioned agents who produce bad outcomes are inferred to be worse than actionsof negatively intentioned agents who produce good outcomes (Study 1). While both agents are judged to be incompetent(Study 2), positively intentioned agents are attributed more control over subsequent negative outcomes (Study 3) and arealso considered more pivotal in bringing them about (Study 4). Together these results suggest that well-intentioned agentsare seen as having more control, perhaps because, we believe they are in a better position to modify their future behaviorto bring about positive outcomes.