Moral, Cognitive and Social: The Nature of Blame (original) (raw)

Blame is a moral judgment that has a cognitive and a social nature. We first focus on the cognitive side and introduce a theoretical model of blame that integrates insights and evidence from extant research. Within this model, we demonstrate the critical role of such concepts as agent, intentionality, and obligation—all of which are grounded in people’s theory of mind. We then contrast two views on the ordering of blame and theory of mind based inferences: blame-late models, which claim that blame follows mental state inferences; and blame-early models, which claim that the opposite order holds. After integrating these two views within our model, we turn to two eminently social topics of moral judgment: blaming as a social act; and blaming of group agents. We suggest that our model of cognitive blame provides a fruitful framework for both of these topics, thus highlighting the intimate connection between blame as a cognitive phenomenon and blame as a social phenomenon. Humans blame,...