Assignment of responsibility for an accident.

This experiment tested the proposition that the worse the consequences of an accidental occurrence, the greater the tendency of Ss to assign responsibility for the catastrophe to some appropriate person. The experiment also tested the specific proposition that an accident victim would be assigned increasing responsibility for his accident as its severity increased. Data supported these hypotheses. There seemed to be 2 ways of judging the same behavior as more responsible for the accident when accidental consequences were severe: (a) Ss could perceive the responsible person as more careless when accidental consequences were severe; (b) Ss could perceive the responsible person's behavior correctly, but apply stricter moral standards in judging the behavior when accidental consequences were severe. Data indicated that only the 2nd method of assigning responsibility was utilized by Ss.