Formation: Examining Others in Depth "Considering The Effects of The Act"

                Suppose a child knocked over and broke a cup. Is he fully responsible for this act? We might want some additional information before reaching a conclusion. Would it help if we knew that he had knocked down a total of fifteen cups? Logically, it shouldn’t. Yet, in fact, we tend to determine causality in part by the consequences of acts. After studying the attribution of causality and intention in children, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1948) concluded that young children seem to disregard extenuating circumstances and assign blame solely on the effects of an act.

                Piaget told his subjects two stories and asked them to judge which protagonist should be punished more severely for his offense. In one story, a boy named John was called to the dinner table. He came immediately, but as he entered the dining room, he knocked over a tea cart that, unknown to him, had been placed directly behind the floor. Fifteen cups were broken as a result of the collision. The boy in the other story, Henry, had been forbidden to take any jam. When his mother left the room, however, Henry climbed up to the cupboard where the jam had been placed and, in his attempt to get the jam, knocked a cup to the floor and broke it.

                Young children (under seven years of age), Piaget found, tend to focus on the objective aspects of a situation, that is, on the number of broken cups. Since John broke fifteen while Henry broke only one, they feel that John should be punished more severely. Older children (nine and over), however, are more concerned about subjective responsibility, that is, with a person’s reasons for acting. In Piaget’s study the older children felt that Henry should receive the greater punishment because his offense was committed while he was in the act of disobeyong an order, whereas John’s offense was purely accidental.

                In a related experiment, Elaine Walster (1966) asked undergraduates to listen to one of several taped versions of a story and to ascribe blame on the basis of the facts provided. The story dealt with a car that had been parked on a hill and had accidentally rolled down. In one version, the car struck a tree, incurring little damage. In another, the car missed the tree and struck another vehicle, damaging its bumper. In a third version, the car rolled down the hill and into a shop, seriously injuring a small child and the shopkeeper. Walster found that greater blame was assigned according to the seriousness of the accidents. When the damage was minimal, the subjects did not feel that the car’s owner was particularly blameworthy—accidents do happen, after all. However, when people were injured by the runaway car, the subjects felt that the owner should be punished for not having had his brakes checked recently. Thus, it appears that adult respondents also judge guilt, at least in part, on the basis of the effects of acts.

(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. 1983. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2nd Edition. United States of America: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

× 『rui@96yR』【butterflyuu】 ×