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Do bad people know more? Interactions between attributions of knowledge and blame

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Abstract

A central topic in experimental epistemology has been the ways that non-epistemic evaluations of an agent’s actions can affect whether the agent is taken to have certain kinds of knowledge. Several scholars (e.g., Beebe and Buckwalter Mind Lang 25:474–98; 2010; Beebe and Jensen Philosophical Psychology 25:689–715, 2012; Schaffer and Knobe Noûs 46:675–708, 2012; Beebe and Shea Episteme 10:219–40, 2013; Buckwalter Philosophical Psychology 27:368–83, 2014; Turri Ergo 1:101–127, 2014) have found that the positive or negative valence of an action can influence attributions of knowledge to the agent. These evaluative effects on knowledge attributions are commonly seen as performance errors, failing to reflect individuals’ genuine conceptual competence with knows. In the present article, I report the results of a series of studies designed to test the leading version of this view, which appeals to the allegedly distorting influence of individuals’ motivation to blame. I argue that the data pose significant challenges to such a view.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Cullen (2010), Nagel (2012), and Beebe (2012) for overviews of some of the most important criticisms of this work.

  2. Despite the fact that the blame hypothesis has been attributed to Nadelhoffer (2004a, 2006)—in large part because of the way his views have been discussed by Knobe (2007, 2010); Knobe and Mendlow 2004)—Nadelhoffer (2004b) maintains that more than blame is at work in Knobe effect cases.

  3. Alicke (2000, p. 568) explains, “Blame-validation processing refers to observers’ proclivity to favor blame versus nonblame explanations for harmful events and to de-emphasize mitigating circumstances.... Blame validation processing is encouraged by the tendency to view people rather than the environment as the prepotent controlling forces behind harmful events.”

  4. Cf. Fantl and McGrath (2002, 2007, 2009) for discussion of epistemic purism and its rivals.

  5. For Knobe’s most recent ruminations on the processes underlying the Knobe effect, cf. Pettit and Knobe (2009) and Knobe (2010). I will not examine in any detail the suggestions he makes about ‘pro-attitudes with shifting default values’ because knowledge is not obviously a pro-attitude, and it is not clear what the shifting defaults would be in the relevant epistemological cases.

  6. For accessible overviews of dual process theorizing in psychology, see Evans and Frankish (2009) and Kahneman (2011).

  7. There is also the issue that the Nazi case has a more complex structure than other vignettes employed in the Knobe effect and ESEE literatures. In Environment, for example, there is only one relevant norm that is violated, and it concerns how one’s actions affect the environment. In Nazi, however, there are two salient norms that are violated: one that concerns obedience of local laws, and another that concerns being complicit in the deaths of innocent people. A proper understanding of the psychological factors at work in more complex cases like this cannot be attained by using only two experimental conditions.

  8. We should, however, keep in mind that proponents of the blame hypothesis can appeal to dual-process considerations and argue that participants’ answers to explicit questions about blame might be generated by controlled (System-2) processes that do not have access to the working of the automatic, unconscious (System-1) processes. In other words, the fact that participants said that a side-effect was not blameworthy does not mean that there was not some process in their minds that registered it as blameworthy. Despite these qualifications, the fact remains that one might have expected overactive blame attribution processes of the sort hypothesized by the blame account to have influenced participants’ conscious (System-2) judgments about blame, but they do not appear to have done so.

  9. 3rd Party Environment: Mann-Whitney \(U = 530.5\), \(p > .05\). 3rd Party Movies: \(U = 607.0\), \(p > .05\). 3rd Party Sales: \(U = 364.5\), \(p > 05\). 3rd Party Nazi: \(U = 426.5\), \(p > .05\).

  10. Each was paid $0.35 for their work.

  11. 3rd Party Environment: \(U = 471.5\), \(p < .01\), \(r = -.43\). 3rd Party Strong Reaction Environment: \(U = 585.5\), \(p < .05\), \(r = -.26\).

  12. Mayor: \(U = 428.5\), \(p < .001\), \(r = -.48\). 3rd Party Strong Reaction Mayor: \(U = 408.5\), \(p < .001\), \(r = -.50\). 3rd Party No Reaction Mayor: \(U = 504.0\), \(p < .01\), \(r = -.36\).

  13. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

  14. U = 18,383.5, \(p < .01\), r = -.12 (small effect size). The participants were undergraduates from the same university at which Beebe and Buckwalter (2010) and Beebe and Jensen (2012) conducted their studies.

  15. The qualifications and payment of these participants were the same as in the online studies above. An additional participant failed to answer the question correctly.

  16. \(U = 6508.0\), \(p > .05\).

  17. I do not want to suggest that these outcomes are bad in an ‘all things considered’ sense—merely that they are bad in some respect.

  18. \(\chi ^{2}~(1, N = 144) = 14.793\), \(p < .001\), Cramér’s V = .32 (medium effect size).

  19. Outcome bias should be distinguished from hindsight bias, which occurs when reporting an outcome’s occurrence unjustifiably increases its perceived probability of occurrence beyond what the prior information available would warrant. In his seminal research on hindsight bias, Fischhoff (1975); Fischhoff and Beyth 1975) found that individuals overestimated what they would have known without the outcome knowledge, as well as what others actually did know without this knowledge. Fischhoff (1975, 293) opines, “it appears that what passes for the wisdom of hindsight often contains heady doses of sophistry—that the perceived inevitability of reported outcomes is imposed upon, rather than legitimately inferred from, the available evidence.” Although outcome information plays an important role in both biases, the distinction between them is that in hindsight bias outcome information skews the perceived (prior) probability of an event’s occurring, while in outcome bias the outcome information distorts qualitative assessments of actions or decisions, independently of the probability of their occurrence.

  20. A constant was added to all values in the data set, in order to eliminate negative and zero values. Then the data were reflected, and the base 10 logarithm of each value was computed.

  21. Condition: \(F (2, 1439) = 14.07\), \(p < .001\), partial \(\upeta ^{2} = .02\). Valence: \(F (1, 1439) = 36.61\), \(p < .001\), partial \(\upeta ^{2} = .03\). Outcome information: \(F (1, 1439) = 46.219\), \(p < .001\), partial \(\upeta ^{2} = .03\).

  22. \(F (1, 1439) = 3.93\), \(p < .05\), partial \(\upeta ^{2} = .003\).

  23. Condition x outcome information: \(F (2, 1439) = 1.02\), \(p > .05\). Condition x valence: \(F (2, 1439) = 2.48\), \(p > .05\).

  24. Condition: \(F(2, 323) = 7.58\), \(p < .01\), partial \(\upeta ^{2} = .05\). Valence: \(F(1, 323) = 6.16\), \(p < .05\), partial \(\upeta ^{2} = .02\).

  25. This suggestion gains support from recent experimental studies (e.g., Turri & Buckwalter forthcoming) that information about truth value is a significant factor in prompting ordinary individuals to attribute knowledge.

  26. Cf., e.g., Buckwalter (2014) and Turri (2014).

  27. The belief heuristic hypothesis shares some things in common with Uttich and Lombrozo’s (2010) suggestion that norm-conforming behavior is generally less informative about the mental states underlying the behavior than norm-violating behavior. Because norms automatically provide reasons for acting in accord with them, Uttich and Lombrozo contend that norm-violating behavior requires and often points toward reasons for the norm violation. According to the belief heuristic hypothesis, an action’s practical costs and benefits provide information about what those reasons are likely to be.

  28. Beebe’s (2013) studies provide direct confirmation for this claim.

  29. Cf. Dalbauer and Hergovich (2013) for an investigation of whether individuals view positively and negatively valenced outcomes as being equally likely.

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    James R. Beebe

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Beebe, J.R. Do bad people know more? Interactions between attributions of knowledge and blame. Synthese 193, 2633–2657 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0872-4

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