Preface NEGATIVE DESERVING : BLAME

Blaming—and avoiding blame—are basic social motivations. These two motivations operate in every area of life: family, friendship, school, work, politics. Experimental analysis of these two classes of motivation offers fruitful opportunities for social attitude theory, developmental psychology, motivation theory, and person science. Opportunities to improve the social-moral level of society have exceptional importance. Blame exhibits algebraic law: Blame = Responsibility + Consequences. Consequences represents the outcome of some action, Responsibility the responsibility of the blamee. This averaging law for blame was first found by Leon (1976, 1977, 1980) and Surber (1977, 1985) with children. This law showed that basic claims of Piaget’s theory were incorrect. More important, this law went further to show that young children have far higher cognitive capabilities than had previously been recognized. In addition, this law demonstrated a simple, powerful method for further analysis (Chapter 5). The basic blame law discovered with children has been replicated and extended in extensive studies with adults. These blame laws provide new methods for studying these important function of personality. Responsibility and Consequences are both usually integrals of multiple determinants that require deeper analysis. Many variables deserve study: extenuation, apology, restitution, and personal relationships, as well as associated processes of excuses and counterblaming. Developing science of blame thus depends on capabilities with integration of multiple variables. The algebraic laws of blame reviewed in this chapter are a step in this direction (Note 0).