The Blame Game: An investigation of Grammatical Aspect and Blame Judgments

Collabra: Psychology

Anita Eerland¹  Andrew M. Sherrill²  Rolf A. Zwaan³  Joseph P. Magliano⁴ 

[1] Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication, Utrecht University, Utrecht;Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta;Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam;Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb

关键词: Grammatical aspect;    blame attribution;    situation model;    language comprehension;   

DOI  :  10.1525/collabra.113

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: University of California Press

【 摘 要 】

Imperfective aspect (i.e., Mark was punching John) is interpreted by the language processing system as a dynamic, unfolding sequence of actions, whereas perfective aspect (i.e., Mark punched John) is interpreted as a complete whole. A recent study showed that grammatical aspect can influence perceptions of intentionality for criminal actions (Hart & Albarracín, 2011). The current study builds on this finding. Five experiments examine whether grammatical aspect can also influence perceptions of blame, a concept related to intentionality. There were no effects of grammatical aspect on judgments of blame but the results showed an effect of narrated order (Experiments 1–3). First-mentioned actions made the agent more to blame for the outcomes than last-mentioned actions. This effect was not due to the order of the blame questions (Experiment 2) or influenced by the chronological order of the events (Experiment 3). Experiments 4 and 5 showed strong effects of grammatical aspect on temporal dynamics and revealed an interesting new finding. Grammatical aspect can influence the mental representation of a non-mentioned action. We discuss our results in light of the current literature on grammatical aspect effects.

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【 授权许可】

CC BY