Citation

Enzle ME, Hawkins WL. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 1992; 28(2): 169-185.

Affiliation

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada; Northern Illinois University, USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0022-1031(92)90037-K

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Alicke and Davis (1989) reported that subjects blamed a hypothetical homeowner more when an apparent intruder he shot and killed turned out to be an innocent person than a dangerous criminal, even though the identity of the victim was not known at the time of the killing. We proposed that this a posteriori outcome effect was mediated by implicit indications that the actor had behaved negligently at the beginning of the event sequence. We conducted three studies with young adult subjects to test this hypothesis. In Study 1, a three treatment one-way design, we established that home defense weapons differ in perceived a priori owner negligence and recklessness, and that the weapon used by the homeowner in the study by Alicke and Davis established a relatively high degree of perceived a priori negligence. Study 2 was a 2 x 2 design in which we compared judgments of blame for the death of an innocent or criminal victim that came about as a result of actor decisions about weapons that were relatively high or low in implicit a priori negligence. The predicted significant interaction effect showed an attenuation of the a posteriori victim information effect when a priori negligence was relatively low. Study 3 was a 2 x 3 design in which we varied explicit information about a priori actor negligence (low vs moderate vs high) in making a mundane decision and a posteriori information about outcomes (positive vs negative). A significant interaction effect on moral judgment again supported our hypothesis. Moral judgment was affected by a posteriori outcome information only when there was substantive evidence of a priori actor negligence.