Jan Garcia Olier

In this paper we explore whether an action’s severity of outcome (somewhat bad v. very bad) influences attributions of intentionality, knowledge and moral judgment. In between-subjects studies conducted in twelve countries from the Americas, Asia and Europe, we found a robust severity effect on all DVs (except for India). The effect arises to simi...

In most states in the US, there is no statutory duty to rescue or warn others to prevent them from being harmed. Over time, however, courts have developed affirmative duties to rescue or warn under specific circumstances, namely (a) when there is a special relationship between the injured party (e.g. a patient) and the party who has particular resp...

There is a large literature exploring the effect of norms on the attribution of causation. Empirical research on this so-called “norm effect” has predominantly focused on two data points: A situation in which an agent violates a salient norm, and one in which there is no violation of a salient norm. Since the phenomenon is understood in bivalent te...

Several empirical studies have documented an asymmetry in people’s assessments of intentional action, so-called ‘Knobe effect’. Accordingly, foreseen (yet undesired) outcomes that are harmful are judged intentional, whereas foreseen (yet undesired) outcomes that are helpful are judged unintentional. The Knobe-effect has been standardly conceived of...