Asymmetric Causal Attributions to Environmental Influences for Prosocial Versus Antisocial Behavior

Abstract

Several recent studies have explored how people may favor different explanations for others' behavior depending on the moral or evaluative valence of the behavior in question. This research tested whether people would be less willing to believe that a person's environment played a role in causing her to exhibit antisocial (as compared to prosocial) behavior. In three experiments, participants read a description of a person engaging in either antisocial or prosocial behavior. Participants were less willing to endorse environmental causes of antisocial (versus prosocial) behavior when the environmental influence in question was witnessing others behaving similarly, either during childhood (Experiment 1) or recently (Experiment 2), or being directly encouraged by others to engage in the behavior described (Experiment 3). These results could be relevant to understanding why people resist attributing wrongdoing to causes outside of individual control in some cases.

Keywords: Causal Attribution; Motivated Reasoning; Social Cognition.

Figure 1.

Mean environmental attribution ratings, by condition, in Experiment 1. Means are collapsed across other independent variables because the additional experimental manipulations did not significantly moderate the antisocial-prosocial asymmetry in endorsement of environmental attributions. Error bars represent ±1 SE of the mean.

Figure 2.

Mean environmental attribution ratings, by condition, in Experiment 2. Means are collapsed across other independent variables because the additional experimental manipulations did not significantly moderate the antisocial-prosocial asymmetry in endorsement of environmental attributions. Error bars represent ±1 SE of the mean.

Figure 3.

Mean environmental attribution ratings, by condition, in Experiment 3. Means are collapsed across other independent variables because the additional experimental manipulations did not significantly moderate the antisocial-prosocial asymmetry in endorsement of environmental attributions. Error bars represent ±1 SE of the mean.