Attributions of responsibility for helping and doing harm
Evidence for confusion of responsibility
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6205972 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John T Cacioppo (0000-0002-0049-3509, corresponding author), Richard E Petty (0000-0002-2870-8575), Mary E Losch (0000-0003-1848-4800) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 100-105 |
| Publication date | 1986-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037//0022-3514.50.1.100 |
| OpenAlex | W4232332406 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 18 |
The social inhibition of helping is well documented, and this phenomenon has been explained in terms of the general processes of audience inhibition, social influence, and diffusion of responsibility. In the present research, we adapted the paradigm used in studies of the attribution of responsibility for an accident to examine a specific audience-inhibition process that may contribute to the social inhibition of helping. Evidence from two experiments showed that an individual who adopted the perspective of a helper following an accident expected to be held increasingly responsible by arriving onlookers for the victim's plight as the number of extant bystanders increased. Results also indicated that there was an objective basis for this expectation: Subjects who adopted the perspective of a newly arriving onlooker increasingly attributed responsibility for doing harm to the individual helping the victim in the accident as the number of bystanders described as already at the scene increased. The distinction between confusion and diffusion of responsibility is emphasized, and limitations to confusion of responsibility for accidents are discussed
Attribution · Confusion · Epistemology · Harm · Helping behavior · Moral responsibility · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Public relations · Social responsibility · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Ethics in medical practice · Law · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Psychology of Social Influence · Social Psychology
Attitude and Attitude Change
Impression management
Judgment under Uncertainty
Learned helplessness in humans
The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings
Assignment of responsibility for an accident
Bystander anonymity and reactions to emergencies
Transgression and altruism
Effects of task difficulty and task uniqueness on social loafing
A cognitive model of social norms for understanding the transgression–helping effect
Costs, diffusion, and the stigmatized victim
Societal influences on attribution
Effects of personal involvement
Defensive attribution
Affect, accessibility of material in memory, and behavior
Many hands make light the work
Motivational biases in the attribution of responsibility for an accident
Ten years of research on group size and helping
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,29 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2021 (20) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |