People systematically update moral judgments of blame

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Moral Psychology

Background:

• Blame functions as a socially costly mechanism for regulating behavior.
• Blame is typically constrained by the need for 'warrant'—justification for moral judgments.
• This necessitates systematic processing of causal and mental information surrounding violations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine how people update blame judgments.
• To test predictions from a socially regulated blame perspective against a motivated-blame perspective.
• To investigate the role of social constraints in blame calibration.

Main Methods:

• Six experiments were conducted using a novel paradigm.
• Studies involved student, internet, and community samples.
• Cognitive load and outgroup judgment scenarios were manipulated.

Main Results:

• Moral perceivers systematically graded blame judgments based on new causal and mental information, without anchoring on initial evaluations.
• Blame updating was symmetric in response to both exacerbating and mitigating information.
• Biases in blame judgments emerged when social requirements for warrant were relaxed, such as when judging outgroup members.

Conclusions:

• Social constraints ensure blame judgments are generally well-calibrated to relevant information.
• Systematic and symmetric updating of blame is robust, even under cognitive load.
• Deviations from calibrated blame occur when social constraints are absent.