Responsibility for forgetting

Murray, Samuel; Murray, Elise D.; Stewart, Gregory W.; Sinnott‐Armstrong, Walter; Brigard, Felipe De

doi:10.1007/s11098-018-1053-3

Cited by 34 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…The suggested sample for an independent samples t test to detect the predicted effect size ( d = .75) with 95% power at a standard error threshold ( p < .05) was 96 participants. Effect sizes were estimated from means and standard deviations taken from Murray et al (2019) and pilot studies. We overrecruited by 20% to account for exclusions.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After providing informed consent, participants were randomly assigned to read one of two vignettes that described Randy forgetting to pick up ingredients that he promised to get at the store after work. The vignettes manipulated Randy's degree of mental control using a previously validated text-based method (Murray et al, 2019):…”

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the High Control condition, Randy's mind is leisurely wandering, which makes it easy for him to reorient his thoughts when they go off topic. These conditions use a previously validated method, which treats stress as a proxy for a lack of mental control (Murray et al, 2019). However, we improve upon previous iterations of this method in two ways.…”

Section: As He Gets In His Carmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing.

Murray¹,

Krasich²,

Irving³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Judgments of blame for others are typically sensitive to what an agent knows and desires.However, when people act negligently, they do not know what they are doing and do not desire the outcomes of their negligence. How, then, do people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing?We propose that people attribute blame for negligent wrongdoing based on perceived mental control, or the degree to which an agent guides their thoughts and attention over time. To acquire information about others' mental control, people self-project their own perceived mental control to anchor third-personal judgments about mental control and concomitant responsibility for negligent wrongdoing. In four experiments (N = 841), we tested whether perceptions of mental control drive third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that the ease with which people can counterfactually imagine an individual being non-negligent mediated the relationship between judgments of control and blame. Studies 2a and 2b indicated that perceived mental control has a strong effect on judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and that first-personal judgments of mental control are moderately correlated with third-personal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing. Finally, we used an autobiographical memory manipulation in Study 3 to make personal episodes of forgetfulness salient. Participants for whom past personal episodes of forgetfulness were made salient judged negligent wrongdoers less harshly compared to a control group for whom past episodes of negligence were not salient.Collectively, these findings suggest that first-personal judgments of mental control drive thirdpersonal judgments of blame for negligent wrongdoing and indicate a novel role for counterfactual thinking in the attribution of responsibility.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: As He Gets In His Carmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing.

Murray¹,

Krasich²,

Irving³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Self Cite

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“…Second, we are responsible for inattention when it reflects a failure to exercise control in circumstances where we are capable of exercising control (Murray, Murray, Stewart, Sinnott‐Armstrong, & De Brigard, ). We might blame a distracted scholar because he could have exercised control to stop mind‐wandering.…”

Section: The Philosophical Significance Of Mind‐wanderingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind‐wandering: A philosophical guide

Irving

Glasser

2019

Philosophy Compass

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Philosophers have long been fascinated by the stream of consciousnessthoughts, images, and bits of inner speech that dance across the inner stage. Yet for centuries, such 'mind-wandering' was deemed private and thus resistant to empirical investigation. Recent developments in psychology and neuroscience have reinvigorated scientific interest in the stream of thought. Despite this flurry of progress, scientists have stressed that mind-wandering research requires firmer philosophical foundations. The time is therefore ripe for the philosophy of mind-wandering. Our review begins with a foundational question: What is mind-wandering? We then investigate the significance of mind-wandering for general philosophical topics, namely, mental action, introspection, and the norms of thinking and attention.

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“…The cognitive capacity to respond to reasons for or against an action and foresee its consequences makes responsibility transfer from the earlier time of the action to the later time of forgetting. If one’s working and prospective memory are intact when one acts, then episodic memory failure may not be a mitigating or excusing condition and not diminish responsibility (Murray, Murray, Stewart, Sinnott-Armstrong, & De Brigard, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Clinical and normative aspects of forgetting.

Glannon

2020

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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provide an insightful and wide-ranging analysis and discussion of forgetting as a natural feature rather than a failure of the memory process (Fawcett & Hulbert, 2020). Their account of how forgetting maintains a positive and coherent self-image ("Editor"), facilitates efficient cognitive function ("Librarian") and enables a creative and flexible worldview ("Inventor") highlights how attenuation or loss of episodic and semantic memory can have an adaptive purpose. As Fawcett and Hulbert point out, their three-dimensional model expands on constructivist views defended by Daniel Schacter and other memory researchers. The main purpose of declarative memory is not to form an accurate representation of the past but to allow us to simulate counterfactual possibilities and imagine different courses of action (Addis & Schacter, 2012;Schacter & Addis, 2007a, 2007bSchacter, Benoit, de Brigard, & Szpunar, 2015). "Information about the past is useful only to the extent that it allows us to anticipate what may happen in the future" (Schacter & Addis, 2007b, p. 27). Further, "remembering the gist of what happened is an economical way of storing the most important aspects of our experience without cluttering memory with trivial details " (2007b, p. 27). Forgetting is a critical component of this process. This concept of memory is traceable to Frederic Bartlett's theory of remembering as a reconstructive rather than reproductive process. Declarative memory is "an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation to our attitudes towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions or experience, and to a little outstanding detail which commonly appears in image or in language form" (Bartlett, 1932, p. 213).The main mechanisms that connect the three dimensions of Fawcett and Hulbert's model are retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) and suppression-induced forgetting (SIF). They facilitate the retention of information congruent with efficient cognitive and emotional functions and the attenuation or removal of Author Note.

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Responsibility for forgetting

Cited by 34 publications

References 50 publications

Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing.

Mental control and attributions of blame for negligent wrongdoing.

Mind‐wandering: A philosophical guide

Clinical and normative aspects of forgetting.

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