Information-Acquisition Processes in Moral Judgments of Blame

When people make moral judgments, what information do they look for? Despite its theoretical and practical implications, this question has largely been neglected by prior literature. The recent Path Model of Blame predicts a canonical order in which people acquire information when judging blame. Upon discovering a negative event, perceivers consider information about causality, then intentionality, then (if the event is intentional) reasons or (if the event is unintentional) preventability. Three studies, using two novel paradigms, assessed and found support for these predictions: In constrained (Study 1) and open-ended (Study 2) information-acquisition contexts, participants were most likely, and fastest, to seek information in the canonical order, even when under time pressure (Study 3). These findings indicate that blame relies on a set of information components that are processed in a systematic order. Implications for moral judgment models are discussed, as are potential roles of emotion and motivated reasoning in information acquisition.