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Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality

In social contexts, people are responsible for their actions and outcomes. Diffusion of responsibility is a well-known social phenomenon: people feel less responsible when performing an action with co-actors than when acting alone. In previous studies, co-actors reduced the participant’s responsibil...

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Autores principales: Hayashida, Kazuki, Miyawaki, Yu, Nishi, Yuki, Morioka, Shu
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7815702/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33488455
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.588089
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author Hayashida, Kazuki
Miyawaki, Yu
Nishi, Yuki
Morioka, Shu
author_facet Hayashida, Kazuki
Miyawaki, Yu
Nishi, Yuki
Morioka, Shu
author_sort Hayashida, Kazuki
collection PubMed
description In social contexts, people are responsible for their actions and outcomes. Diffusion of responsibility is a well-known social phenomenon: people feel less responsible when performing an action with co-actors than when acting alone. In previous studies, co-actors reduced the participant’s responsibility attribution by making the cause of the outcomes ambiguous. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the presence of co-actors creates diffusion of responsibility even in situations where it is “obvious” that both oneself and the co-actor are the causes of an outcome. To investigate this potential diffusion of responsibility, we used a temporal binding (TB) task as a measure of causal attribution. Low TB effects indicate the enhancement of external attribution (i.e., diffusion of responsibility) in perceptual processing for the action and outcomes. To investigate the influence of presence of a co-actor on causal attribution, participants were required to act under two experimental conditions: an ALONE condition (participant only) or a TOGETHER condition (with a co-actor). The only difference between the two conditions was whether the actions were shared. In addition, to make participants feel responsible, they were induced to feel guilt. In the High-harm condition, participants gave a financial reduction to a third party. When guilt was induced, participants showed lower TB effects in the TOGETHER condition compared to the ALONE condition. Our study suggests that actions with a co-actor change causal attributions even though the causes of the outcome are obvious. This may have implications for understanding diffusion of responsibility in inhumane situations.
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spelling pubmed-78157022021-01-21 Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality Hayashida, Kazuki Miyawaki, Yu Nishi, Yuki Morioka, Shu Front Psychol Psychology In social contexts, people are responsible for their actions and outcomes. Diffusion of responsibility is a well-known social phenomenon: people feel less responsible when performing an action with co-actors than when acting alone. In previous studies, co-actors reduced the participant’s responsibility attribution by making the cause of the outcomes ambiguous. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the presence of co-actors creates diffusion of responsibility even in situations where it is “obvious” that both oneself and the co-actor are the causes of an outcome. To investigate this potential diffusion of responsibility, we used a temporal binding (TB) task as a measure of causal attribution. Low TB effects indicate the enhancement of external attribution (i.e., diffusion of responsibility) in perceptual processing for the action and outcomes. To investigate the influence of presence of a co-actor on causal attribution, participants were required to act under two experimental conditions: an ALONE condition (participant only) or a TOGETHER condition (with a co-actor). The only difference between the two conditions was whether the actions were shared. In addition, to make participants feel responsible, they were induced to feel guilt. In the High-harm condition, participants gave a financial reduction to a third party. When guilt was induced, participants showed lower TB effects in the TOGETHER condition compared to the ALONE condition. Our study suggests that actions with a co-actor change causal attributions even though the causes of the outcome are obvious. This may have implications for understanding diffusion of responsibility in inhumane situations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7815702/ /pubmed/33488455 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.588089 Text en Copyright © 2021 Hayashida, Miyawaki, Nishi and Morioka. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Hayashida, Kazuki
Miyawaki, Yu
Nishi, Yuki
Morioka, Shu
Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality
title Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality
title_full Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality
title_fullStr Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality
title_full_unstemmed Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality
title_short Changes of Causal Attribution by a Co-actor in Situations of Obvious Causality
title_sort changes of causal attribution by a co-actor in situations of obvious causality
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7815702/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33488455
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.588089
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