How responsibility attributions to self and others relate to outcome ownership in a social context
| 26 July, 2022 | Matt Jaquiery and Marwa El Zein |
Responsibility judgements have important consequences in our society. Studies have mostly focused on how a person’s responsibility determines the outcome they deserve, for example, whether they are rewarded or punished.
In this conversation with Matt Jaquiery (University of Oxford) and Marwa El Zein (Max-Planck Institute for Human Development), we dig deeper into the opposite scenario: how outcome ownership influences responsibility attributions in social contexts. This topic is explored in their Registered Report (Stage 1 and 2) on Wellcome Open Research.
The benefits of publishing a Registered Report
Registered Reports are a form of empirical article in which the methods and proposed analyses are published and reviewed prior to research being conducted. We chose this article type for personal, philosophical, and scientific reasons.
Registered Reports allow for the critique and improvement of methods before data collection. For this reason, we felt that, from a philosophical standpoint, this format would work better than the traditional Research Article.
Scientifically speaking, our project was suitable for a Registered Report because we had a clear research question using a novel method. We found this resulted in even more constructive reviewer feedback. In addition, the investigation could have led to confusing or contradictory results, so we wanted to avoid presenting to readers a convenient but potentially misleading story.
Outcome ownership and attributions of responsibility
Definitions
“Ownership” refers to things that are ours or given to us. In the context of the study, “outcome ownership” means receiving a reward after a successful collective decision.
“Responsibility attributions” refers to how we judge our own or someone else’s responsibility for a decision and its result.
Scope of the study
The concept that people receive rewards based on whether they “deserve” them is widely accepted. This also involves how responsible they are for the action that leads to the reward.
In our study, we focused on the opposite link: whether someone who is given a reward or penalty for a decision is judged as more responsible than another person who equally contributed to the decision but did not receive a reward or penalty.
Consider a Nobel prize winner: by winning the award, this individual will receive significant credit and be viewed as largely, if not entirely, responsible for the award-winning work. Yet, the work may have been the outcome of a team effort.
Once more, the same could apply to an accomplished athlete who receives rewards on an individual level for the team’s performance. In this case individualized reward and recognition could lead to bias, by attributing a team’s success to one player.
Another example is a CEO who receives praise for their company’s achievements. The work that led to this success could have been carried out by a team of employees, yet the CEO is more likely to be considered responsible for the positive outcome.
Novelty of the research
Previous studies examine the relationship between responsibility and outcome ownership in individual contexts. We wanted to tackle this question in a social context.
In general, most of our decisions are either made as a group, or they are at least influenced by others around us. Being part of a group creates ambiguity around actions of an individual, and who contributed to a particular action or a decision. When people share responsibility for the outcomes of their actions and decisions, the ambiguity makes it possible for them to shift responsibility toward themselves or others based on the outcomes.
For example, people in groups tend to claim more credit for positive outcomes. Yet, they tend to avoid responsibility for negative outcomes.
Online group-decision making experiment
Design
Participants in the online experiment had to choose between two gambling games (referred to as ‘’gambles’’) on repeated rounds as a group of three. The gambles corresponded to images of real-life gambles. They could lead either to a positive (win a reward) or neutral (no reward) outcome.
Only one of the individuals received the group decision outcome at each round. Then, participants had to rate the responsibility of each player for the outcome. We examined whether these responsibility judgments changed based on who received the outcome.
Results
We found that the player who received the outcome was judged as the most responsible. Also, the bias whereby a person is judged more responsible for a positive vs a negative outcome increased for the person receiving the outcome. Finally, these effects were more important when participants were judging their own responsibility compared to judging others’ responsibility.
Demo version of the experiment
We chose to include a demo version of the experiment for several reasons:
1. Psychology experiments are easier to understand when you can see what the participants are doing. Descriptions often focus on what the participants are supposed to be doing. In a Registered Report, where feedback is required on the method, this distinction becomes even more critical.
2. We made the materials publicly available for others to use and edit. Having a short version of the experiment makes the development of the software far easier.
3. We want our readers to be able to see exactly what the experiment was, to enable a better understanding of our questions, methods, and results.
Potential impact of this research
Research community
Our findings suggest a strong link between what people own and responsibility attributions. We will present our research in blogs and conferences to highlight these novel results. We hope this will encourage the replication of findings in different contexts, such as interactive groups or different types of decisions.
Private sector
Our research can also be useful for team leaders working in the private sector. We found that people who receive rewards can be seen as more responsible when it comes to generating revenue.
This knowledge can help team leaders adopt better reward and recognition practices where they can distribute rewards more fairly. This can enhance their understanding and acknowledgment of individual contributions and increase a sense of responsibility among employees. As a result, employees can further improve their future work and contribution to an organization.
Policymakers
Our study has highlighted the role of ownership in attributing responsibility to others in collective behaviors.
Furthermore, our findings would be useful to help tackle societal issues such as climate change. As our research suggests, ownership plays a critical role in motivating people to feel more responsible. For example, individuals could receive points for any pro-environmental action they perform. Owning such rewards could increase their feelings of responsibility, which could reinforce their willingness to carry out more pro-environmental actions.
Next steps
A potential next step is to replicate the study with interactive groups of people. We could also extend the research to different types of social situations.
Moreover, examining group decisions that result from discussions could be a situation worth exploring. In this context, there might be other biases involved, such as who talks the most, regardless of the usefulness of their contributions. In addition, it would be interesting to quantify the relative scale of these biases.
Another factor we would like to better understand, is whether increased responsibility based on outcome ownership can change how people learn from their decisions.
You can read the full articles and their peer review reports on Wellcome Open Research: