If not me, then who? Responsibility and replacement

Wu, Sarah A.; Gerstenberg, Tobias

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105646

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 88 publications

(121 reference statements)

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“…Causation happens not only between billiard balls but between people, too (48,38,1). When people assign responsibility, they care about what causal role a person's action played in bringing about the outcome (34,130,74), and what the action revealed about the person (40,75,125,107,126,68,23).…”

Section: Causation In the Social Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition

Gerstenberg

2024

Preprint

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How do people make causal judgments and assign responsibility? In this paper, I argue that counterfactual simulations are key. To simulate counterfactuals, we need three ingredients: a generative mental model of the world, the ability to perform interventions on that model, and the capacity to simulate the consequences of these interventions. The counterfactual simulation model (CSM) uses these ingredients to capture people's intuitive understanding of the physical and social world. In the physical domain, the CSM predicts people's causal judgments about dynamic collision events, complex situations that involve multiple causes, omissions as causes, and causes that sustain physical stability. In the social domain, the CSM predicts responsibility judgments in helping and hindering scenarios.

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Section: Causation In the Social Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead of imagining that an agent could have had a different mental state, one could also consider what would have happened if that agent had been replaced by someone else (125). Indeed, the law uses two counterfactual tests to establish causation.…”

Section: Causation In the Social Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition

Gerstenberg

2024

Preprint

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Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition

Gerstenberg

2024

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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The importance of epistemic intentions in ascription of responsibility

Kovacevic,

Bonalumi,

Heintz

2024

Sci Rep

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We investigate how people ascribe responsibility to an agent who caused a bad outcome but did not know he would. The psychological processes for making such judgments, we argue, involve finding a counterfactual in which some minimally benevolent intention initiates a course of events that leads to a better outcome than the actual one. We hypothesize that such counterfactuals can include, when relevant, epistemic intentions. With four vignette studies, we show that people consider epistemic intentions when ascribing responsibility for a bad outcome. We further investigate which epistemic intentions people are likely to consider when building counterfactuals for responsibility ascription. We find that, when an agent did not predict a bad outcome, people ascribe responsibility depending on the reasons behind the agents’ lack of knowledge. People judge agents responsible for the bad outcome they caused when they could have easily predicted the consequences of their actions but did not care to acquire the relevant information. However, when this information was hard to acquire, people are less likely to judge them responsible.

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If not me, then who? Responsibility and replacement

Cited by 3 publications

References 88 publications

Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition

Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition

Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition

The importance of epistemic intentions in ascription of responsibility

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