Naive cynicism in everyday theories of responsibility assessment : On biased assumptions of bias

Evidence from several lab and field studies is presented that indicates that people have cynical intuitions about how others assess responsibility. Married couples (Study 1), video game enthusiasts (Study 2), debaters (Study 3), and darts players (Study 4) divided responsibility for a series of desirable and undesirable joint outcomes and estimated how others would apportion responsibility. In all studies, participants expected the responsibility allocations of others-but not their own-to be motivationally biased. This was true regardless of whether responsibility assessments actually were biased. In Studies 3 and 4, participants assumed that their teammates would be less biased than their opponents, suggesting that factors known to influence motivation can moderate the strength of this naive cynicism.

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