Cognitive processes involved in blame and blame-like judgments and in forgiveness and forgiveness-like judgments.
Experiment 1 compared the cognitive processes involved in blame and forgiveness judgments under identical experimental conditions. Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1 with 4 judgment scales: willingness to prosecute, willingness to avenge, resentment level, and willingness to make up. Participants were presented with 32 scenarios in which a doctor made a medical error. These situations contained 5 items: the degree of proximity with the doctor (e.g., a family doctor known since childhood), the degree of negligence, the severity of consequences, apologies or contrition, and cancellation of consequences. Functional cognitive analysis grouped judgments into 2 categories: blame-like judgments (blame, prosecution, and revenge) and forgiveness-like judgments (resentment, forgiveness, and reconciliation). Blame-like judgments were characterized by additive integration rules, with negligence followed by apologies as the 2 main cues. Forgiveness-like judgments were characterized by an interactive integration rule, with apologies followed by negligence as the 2 main cues.
Mullet
Etienne
E
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. mullet@univ-tlse2.fr
Rivière
Sheila
S
Sastre
María Teresa Muñoz
MT
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003071:Cognition; D035881:Compensation and Redress; D034462:Dissent and Disputes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008318:Malpractice; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations