Harmful situations, impure people: an attribution asymmetry across moral domains.
People make inferences about the actions of others, assessing whether an act is best explained by person-based versus situation-based accounts. Here we examine people's explanations for norm violations in different domains: harmful acts (e.g., assault) and impure acts (e.g., incest). Across four studies, we find evidence for an attribution asymmetry: people endorse more person-based attributions for impure versus harmful acts. This attribution asymmetry is partly explained by the abnormality of impure versus harmful acts, but not by differences in the moral wrongness or the statistical frequency of these acts. Finally, this asymmetry persists even when the situational factors that lead an agent to act impurely are stipulated. These results suggest that, relative to harmful acts, impure acts are linked to person-based attributions.
['Chakroff|Alek|A|', 'Young|Liane|L|']
D000328:Adult D004644:Emotions D005260:Female D006801:Humans D033182:Intention D007600:Judgment D008297:Male D009014:Morals D012938:Social Perception
Morality Action explanation Attribution theory Moral foundation theory Moral psychology Social cognition