Abstract
When bad things happen, how do we decide who is to blame and how much they should be punished? In the present studies, we examined whether subtly different linguistic descriptions of accidents influence how much people blame and punish those involved. In three studies, participants judged how much people involved in particular accidents should be blamed and how much they should have to pay for the resulting damage. The language used to describe the accidents differed subtly across conditions: Either agentive (transitive) or nonagentive (intransitive) verb forms were used. Agentive descriptions led participants to attribute more blame and request higher financial penalties than did nonagentive descriptions. Further, linguistic framing influenced judgments, even when participants reasoned about a well-known event, such as the “wardrobe malfunction” of Super Bowl 2004. Importantly, this effect of language held, even when people were able to see a video of the event. These results demonstrate that even when people have rich established knowledge and visual information about events, linguistic framing can shape event construal, with important real-world consequences. Subtle differences in linguistic descriptions can change how people construe what happened, attribute blame, and dole out punishment. Supplemental results and analyses may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Brown, R., & Fish, D. (1983). The psychological causality implicit in language. Cognition, 14, 237–273.
Fausey, C. M., & Boroditsky, L. (in press). Whodunnit? Cross-linguistic differences in eyewitness memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
Fausey, C. M., Long, B. L., Inamori, A., & Boroditsky, L. (in press). Constructing agency: The role of language. Frontiers in Cultural Psychology.
Filipović, L. (2007). Language as a witness: Insights from cognitive linguistics. International Journal of Speech, Language & the Law, 14, 245–267.
Garvey, C., Caramazza, A., & Yates, J. (1975). Factors influencing assignments of pronoun antecedents. Cognition, 3, 227–243.
Jansson v. Bowen, No. 34-2008-00017351 (Sacramento Super. Ct. Aug. 7, 2008).
Kasof, L., & Lee, J. Y. (1993). Implicit causality as implicit salience.Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 65, 877–891. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.65.5.877
Kassin, S. M., & Lowe, C. A. (1979). On the use of single sentence descriptions of behavior in attribution research. Social Behavior & Personality, 7, 1–8.
Lee, L., Frederick, S., & Ariely, D. (2006). Try it, you’ll like it: The influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer. Psychological Science, 17, 1054–1058. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01829.x
Levin, I. P. (1987). Associative effects of information framing. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 25, 85–86.
Levin, I. P., & Gaeth, G. J. (1988). How consumers are affected by the framing of attribute information before and after consuming the product. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 374–378.
Loftus, E. F., Miller, D. G., & Burns, H. J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory, 4, 19–31.
Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 13, 585–589.
Maass, A., Karasawa, M., Politi, F., & Suga, S. (2006). Do verbs and adjectives play different roles in different cultures? A cross-linguistic analysis of person representation. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 90, 734–750. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.734
Old Bailey Proceedings Online (2009). Retrieved November 3, 2009, from www.oldbaileyonline.org.
Pickering, M. J., & Majid, A. (2007). What are implicit causality and consequentiality? Language & Cognitive Processes, 22, 780–788.
Pryor, J. B., & Kriss, M. (1977). The cognitive dynamics of salience in the attribution process. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 35, 49–55. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.1.49
Schmid, J., & Fiedler, K. (1998). The backbone of closing speeches: The impact of prosecution versus defense language on judicial attributions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28, 1140–1172. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01672.x
Semin, G. R., Rubini, M., & Fiedler, K. (1995). The answer is in the question: The effect of verb causality upon locus of explanation. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 834–842.
Sher, S., & McKenzie, C. R. M. (2006). Information leakage from logically equivalent frames. Cognition, 101, 467–494. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.001
Shiv, B., Carmon, Z., & Ariely, D. (2005). Placebo effects of marketing actions: Consumers may get what they pay for. Journal of Marketing Research, 42, 383–393. doi:10.1509/jmkr.2005.42.4.383
Timberlake, J. (February 1, 2004). “Statement From Justin Timberlake,” PR Newswire.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207–232.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453–458.
White, P. A. (2003). Effects of wording and stimulus format on the use of contingency information in causal judgment. Memory & Cognition, 31, 231–242.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The present research was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to C.M.F. and NSF Grant No. 0608514 to L.B.
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fausey, C.M., Boroditsky, L. Subtle linguistic cues influence perceived blame and financial liability. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17, 644–650 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.17.5.644
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.17.5.644