Causal Responsibility and Robust Causation
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How do people judge the degree of causal responsibility that an agent has for the outcomes of her actions? We show that a relatively unexplored factor - the robustness (or stability) of the causal chain linking the agent's action and the outcome - influences judgments of causal responsibility of the agent. In three experiments, we vary robustness by manipulating the number of background circumstances under which the action causes the effect, and find that causal responsibility judgments increase with robustness. In the first experiment, the robustness manipulation also raises the probability of the effect given the action. Experiments 2 and 3 control for probability-raising, and show that robustness still affects judgments of causal responsibility. In particular, Experiment 3 introduces an Ellsberg type of scenario to manipulate robustness, while keeping the conditional probability and the skill deployed in the action fixed. Experiment 4, replicates the results of Experiment 3, while contrasting between judgments of causal strength and of causal responsibility. The results show that in all cases, the perceived degree of responsibility (but not of causal strength) increases with the robustness of the action-outcome causal chain.
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Responsibility for an outcome requires a reliable causal connection between the agent's intention to reach or avoid the outcome and the outcome in fact being reached or avoided.
“This is because responsibility for an outcome requires a reliable causal connection between the agent's intention to reach or avoid the outcome and the outcome in fact being reached or avoided”
From AI, Opacity, and Personal Autonomy (2022) · cites this paper as Grinfeld et al., 2020
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Corcoll, O., Mohamed, Y., & Vicente, R. (2021) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2106.00266
“In particular, humans compare what happened to a normative imagined world (Halpern, 2016; Morris et al., 2018; Langenhoff et al., 2019; Grinfeld et al., 2020).”
BackgroundSome Empirical Results Concerning Causal Learning and Representation
Woodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0005
Self-citationWoodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0006
Self-citationWoodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0009
Self-citationWoodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0007
Self-citationThe Normative and the Descriptive
Woodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0002
Self-citationExperimental Results Concerning Invariance: Cheng, Lombrozo, and Others
Woodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0008
Self-citationMethods for Investigating Causal Cognition
Woodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0004
Self-citationWoodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.003.0003
Self-citationCorporeal Corporations: People Construe Companies as Having a Mind and Body When Allocating BlamePreprint
Sharma, N., Flores‐Robles, G., & Gantman, A. P. (2023) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/bv7ca
Woodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.002.0005
Self-citationWoodward, J. (2021) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oso/9780197585412.002.0004
Self-citationCause or moral responsibility?
Goulette, V., Thrierr, J., & Verkampt, F. (2025) · International Review of Pragmatics · doi:10.1163/18773109-01701004
Corporate Personification: A Mind/Body Metaphor Guides Blame for Organizational Wrongdoing
Sharma, N., Flores‐Robles, G., & Gantman, A. P. (2025) · Social Cognition · doi:10.1521/soco.2025.43.4.356
Berryman, K. (2025) · Asian Philosophy · doi:10.1080/09552367.2025.2597622
Intuitions about trait responsibilitiesPreprint
Xiang, Y., Hsu, S. Y. L., & Gershman, S. J. (2026) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.7624528
- Authors
- Grinfeld, G., Lagnado, D., Gerstenberg, T., Woodward, J. F., & Usher, M.
- Affiliations
- Tel Aviv University (IL)
- University College London (GB)
- Stanford University (US)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lagnado, David
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2020-05-27
- Volume
- 11
- Pages
- 1069-1069
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7269104
- OpenAlex
- W3032130558
- Cited by
- 41
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 4.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Bayesian Modeling and Causal Inference
- Keywords
- causal responsibility, causal judgment, causal strength, Ellsberg paradox, causal reasoning, moral responsibility
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