Distributing Blame Among Multiple Entities When Autonomous Technologies Cause Harm
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21453942 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ryan M McManus (0000-0002-1793-1595, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA, corresponding author), Catherine C Mesick (California State University, Northridge), Abraham M Rutchick (0000-0003-3402-0934, California State University, Northridge) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 10 |
| Pages | 2068-2084 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0146-1672 • E-ISSN: 1552-7433 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01461672241238303 |
| PMID | 38613365 |
| OpenAlex | W4394786028 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 34 |
As autonomous technology emerges, new variations in old questions arise. When autonomous technologies cause harm, who is to blame? The current studies compare reactions toward harms caused by human-controlled vehicles (HCVs) or human soldiers (HSs) to identical harms by autonomous vehicles (AVs) or autonomous robot soldiers. Drivers of HCVs, or HSs, were blamed more than mere users of AVs or HSs who outsourced their duties to ARSs. However, as human drivers/soldiers became less involved in (or were unaware of the preprogramming that led to) the harm, blame was redirected toward other entities (i.e., manufacturers and the tech company’s executives), showing the opposite pattern as human drivers/soldiers. Results were robust to how blame was measured (i.e., degrees of blame versus apportionment of total blame). Overall, this research furthers the blame literature, raising questions about why, how (much), and to whom blame is assigned when multiple agents are potentially culpable
Apportionment · Blame · Business · Computer security · Harm · Political science · Computer Science · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Law · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Risk Perception and Management · Social Psychology
Judgments of cause and blame
The development of intent-based moral judgment
The Moral Machine experiment
The myth of harmless wrongs in moral cognition
Constraints on Generality (COG)
A Theory of Blame
Calculating and reporting effect sizes to facilitate cumulative science
Judging accidental harm
Autonomous Vehicles and the Attribution of Moral Responsibility
What drives support for self-driving car technology in the United States
Causal deviance and the attribution of moral responsibility
Allocating moral responsibility to multiple agents
Autonomous morals
People systematically update moral judgments of blame
The Moral Dyad
Intentionality
Culpable control and the psychology of blame
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |