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Letters | Coronavirus crisis: lessons from moral psychology on why the blame game is the wrong way to go
- Research has shown people are more likely to attribute intention and assign blame when things go wrong. However, the coronavirus outbreak is a ‘problem of many hands’ for which it is difficult to hold any individual or group responsible
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Covid-19 has now killed more than 2,000 people and infected over 80,000 in at least 46 countries. Early information about the virus was not shared, increasing its spread and impact.
Was this the result of an intentional government cover-up or an unintentional administrative failure? When it comes to blame, the answer probably doesn’t matter.
Research has shown people are more likely to attribute intention to actions and assign blame when the consequences of the actions are negative. These reactions are natural, but they make it impossible to understand and prevent the harm caused by complex social phenomena.
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In a now famous study, philosopher Joshua Knobe presented people with one of two scenarios, involving either harmful or helpful consequences. The first scenario reads as follows: “The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.’ The chairman answered, ‘I don’t care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new programme.’ They started the new programme. Sure enough, the environment was harmed.”
In the second scenario, “harm” and its variants are replaced with “help” and its variants.
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