If not me, then who? Responsibility and replacement

Abstract

How do people hold others responsible? Responsibility judgments are affected not only by what actually happened, but also by what could have happened if things had turned out differently. Here, we look at how replaceability -- the ease with which a person could have been replaced by someone else -- affects responsibility. We develop the counterfactual replacement model which runs simulations of alternative scenarios to determine the probability that the outcome would have been different if the person of interest had been replaced. The model predicts that a person is held more responsible when it would have been more difficult to replace them. To test the model's predictions, we design a paradigm that quantitatively varies replaceability by manipulating the number of replacements as well as the probability with which each replacement would have been available. Across three experiments featuring increasingly complex scenarios, we show that the model explains participants' responsibility judgments well in both social and physical settings, and better than alternative models that rely only on features of what actually happened.

Towards a computational model of responsibility judgments in sequential human-AI collaboration

“…Existing theories about the cognitive process of responsibility attribution have established strong ties with causality (Pearl, 2009) and counterfactual reasoning (Byrne, 2016;Kahneman et al, 1982;Roese, 1997). Humans tend to consider an object, event, action or agent as (causally) responsible for an outcome if they can mentally simulate an alternative reality where that outcome would have been different if the candidate cause had not existed or occurred in the first place (Beckers, 2023;Chockler & Halpern, 2004;Gerstenberg et al, 2018;Halpern & Kleiman-Weiner, 2018;Lagnado et al, 2013;Langenhoff et al, 2021;Triantafyllou et al, 2022;Wu & Gerstenberg, 2024;Wu et al, 2023;Xiang et al, 2023;Zultan et al, 2012). In that context, Gerstenberg et al (2021) have developed the counterfactual simulation model (CSM), a computational model that accurately predicts the extent to which people perceive an object (e.g., a moving billiard ball) as a cause of an observed outcome (e.g., potting another ball).…”

Making a positive difference: Criticality in groups

“…A positive outcome can still be reached even if not everyone in the group did a great job. On the other hand, such redundancies are likely to lead people to think of their contributions as not being critical, thereby diminishing their motivation to work hard (Falk et al, 2020;Falk & Szech, 2013;Wu & Gerstenberg, 2023). In fact, many problems we face as society today, such as the problem of global warming, are problems of perceived criticality.…”

“…When people credit or blame others, they care about whether the outcome was intended (Lagnado & Channon, 2008), foreseeable (Brickman, Ryan, & Wortman, 1975) and under the control of the agent (Gerstenberg, Ejova, & Lagnado, 2011;Gerstenberg et al, 2018;McClure, Hilton, & Sutton, 2007). Researchers have also looked at how responsibility is attributed in groups (Douer & Meyer, 2022;El Zein, Bahrami, & Hertwig, 2019;Forsyth, Zyzniewski, & Giammanco, 2002;Gantman, Sternisko, Gollwitzer, Oettingen, & Van Bavel, 2020;Gerstenberg, Lagnado, & Kareev, 2010;Koskuba, Gerstenberg, Gordon, Lagnado, & Schlottmann, 2018;Lagnado, Gerstenberg, & Zultan, 2013;Teigen & Brun, 2011;Wu & Gerstenberg, 2023;Zultan, Gerstenberg, & Lagnado, 2012).…”

A computational model of responsibility judgments from counterfactual simulations and intention inferences

“…One way of capturing a person's causal role in a situation is by considering what would have happened in a counterfactual scenario in which they hadn't been there, or had acted differently (Lewis, 1973;Pearl, 2000;Chockler & Halpern, 2004;Halpern & Pearl, 2005;Lagnado et al, 2013;Wu & Gerstenberg, 2023). However, little work has investigated the actual cognitive process by which people simulate counterfactuals involving agents.…”