Michael, John and Szigeti, András (2019) “The Group Knobe Effect” : evidence that people intuitively attribute agency and responsibility to groups. Philosophical Explorations, 22 (1). pp. 44-61. doi:10.1080/13869795.2018.1492007

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Abstract

In the current paper, we present and discuss a series of experiments in which we investigated people’s willingness to ascribe intentions, as well as blame and praise, to groups. The experiments draw upon the so-called “Knobe Effect”. Knobe (2003) found that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of actions influences people’s assessment of whether those side-effects were brought about intentionally, and also that people are more willing to assign blame for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise for positive side-effect of actions. Building upon this research, we found evidence that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of group actions influences people’s willingness to attribute intentions to groups, (experiment 1a), and that people are more willing to assign blame to groups for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise to groups for positive side-effects of actions (experiment 1b). We also found evidence (experiments 2a, 2b, 3 and 4) that the “Group Knobe Effect” persists even when intentions and blame/praise are attributed to groups non-distributively, indicating that people tend not to think of group intentions and group blame/praise in distributive terms. We conclude that the folk are collectivist about group intentions, and also about the blameworthiness and praiseworthiness of groups.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Praise, Blame, Social groups, Collective behavior
Journal or Publication Title:	Philosophical Explorations
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1386-9795
Official Date:	2019
Dates:	Date Event 2019 Published 4 July 2018 Available 4 May 2018 Updated 7 February 2018 Accepted
Volume:	22
Number:	1
Page Range:	pp. 44-61
DOI:	10.1080/13869795.2018.1492007
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:	Project/Grant ID RIOXX Funder Name Funder ID 679092 European Research Council http://viaf.org/viaf/130022607 26167 Aarhus Universitet http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100007605
Related URLs:	Publisher

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