Sarin, Arunima;
Cushman, Fiery;
(2023)
Punishment in negligence is multifactorial: influenced by outcome, lack of due care, and the mere failure of thought.
PsyArXiv Preprints: Ithaca, NY, USA.
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Abstract
Why do we often punish negligent acts? Leading accounts ground punishment for negligence in two well-known, general phenomena: outcome bias and lack of due care. We isolate and verify each of these influences. Additionally, however, we find that people punish a feature unique to cases of negligence: the failure to recall relevant information at the right time. In other words, people punish mere failures of thought. Specifically, in line with the predictions of outcome bias we find that people punish negligent actors more when their negligence leads to harmful instead of harmless outcomes (Experiment 1). But they deem punishment for negligence to be successful when the actor ceases to be negligent, rather than the harm ceasing to occur (Experiment 2). Supporting the lack of due care proposal, we find that people punish negligent actors more when they fail to take reasonable antecedent precautions (Experiment 3) or when they demonstrate insufficient care towards their task (Experiment 4). Finally, supporting the mere failure of thought hypothesis, we find that people punish negligent actors more when they fail to bring relevant information to mind at the right time (Experiment 5), even compared to cases where the information is supplied by an exogenous reminder (Experiment 6). Taken together, our findings suggest that punishment for negligence is determined by multiple factors: bad outcome, lack of due care, and the mere failure of thought.
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