One thought too few: An adaptive rationale for punishing negligence

Abstract

Why do we punish negligence? Leading accounts explain away the punishment of negligence as a consequence of other, well-known phenomena: outcome bias, character inference, or the volitional choice not to exercise due care. Although they capture many important cases, these explanations fail to account for others. We argue that, in addition to these phenomena, there is something both fundamental and unique to the punishment of negligence itself: People hold others directly responsible for the basic fact of failing to bring to mind information that would help them to avoid important risks. In other words, we propose that at its heart negligence is a failure of thought. Drawing on the current literature in moral psychology, we suggest that people find it natural to punish such failures, even when they don’t arise from conscious, volitional choice. Then, drawing on the literature on how thoughts come to mind, we argue that punishing a person for forgetting will help them remember in the future. This provides new insight on the structure and function of our tendency to punish negligent actions.

Produced and Counterfactual Effort Contribute to Responsibility Attributions in Collaborative Tasks

“…The key implication is that agents should be credited or blamed more based on how much effort they could have exerted. This idea is broadly consistent with the account of negligence developed by Sarin and Cushman (2022), who argued that people punish negligence when others could have exerted more mental effort (e.g., bringing to mind information useful for avoiding important risks).…”

Do as I explain: Explanations communicate optimal interventions

“…In our model, "relevant" simply means pointing toward useful actions. These actions might take the simple form of throwing a switch in a game show, but they could also be more complex, such as blaming or punishing another person for what they did (or failed to do; see Alicke, Rose, & Bloom, 2012;Samland & Waldmann, 2016;Sarin & Cushman, 2024;Sytsma, 2020). From our model's perspective, people blame some but not others because they believe that it's the blameworthy person one should do something about -their behavior needs to change.…”

Punishment in negligence is multifactorial: influenced by outcome, lack of due care, and the mere failure of thought

“…Why are people sensitive to mere failures of thought? From an adaptive standpoint, punishing such failures may serve an important function (Coricelli et al, 2005;Lieder et al, 2018;Mattar & Daw, 2018;Sarin & Cushman, 2022). Thoughts can come to mind through controlled, effortful mechanisms, but also automatically (Cushman & Morris, 2015;Dayan, 2012;Norman & Shallice, 1986).…”