Reactions to life dilemmas: Risk taking, success and responsibility attribution

Attributions of responsibility for outcomes in typical life dilemmas were studied, as a function of the actors' risky or cautious decisions, and success or failure outcomes. Subjects (N=133) read descriptions of eight modified life dilemmas based on Kogan and Wallach's (1964) questionnaire, each concluded by a paragraph describing the risky/cautious decision made by the actor and the success/failure outcome. Subjects provided judgements about (a) the responsibility of the actor; (b) the locus of causality in terms of Weiner's (1974) four categories (ability, effort, task difficulty, luck); (c) their perception of the actor; and (d) the situation confronting him. Results indicated that risky decisions led to significantly more responsibility being attributed to the actor. Judgements on all of Weiner's (1974) causal categories, except luck, were significantly affected by the actor's riskiness. Success or failure only affected attributions to effort. There was no significant interaction between these two factors, which is interpreted as supporting a rational, cognitive model of responsibility attributions. These results confirm the important role information about risk taking plays in everyday attributions of responsibility, and further work exploring the role of this cue in “naive” attributions of responsibility is proposed.

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