糖心TV

David Lagnado (University College London)

Spreading the blame

How do people attribute responsibility when multiple agents contribute to a group outcome? The prevalence of over-determination in such cases makes this a difficult problem for counterfactual theories of causal responsibility. This talk presents a general framework for assigning responsibility in multiple agent contexts, drawing on recent work in causal structural modeling. The proposed model is a function of both pivotality (whether an agent made a difference to the outcome) and criticality (how important the agent is perceived to be for the outcome, before any actions are taken). The model explains empirical results from various studies that manipulate both pivotality and criticality.