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© 2010 The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 644
When bad things happen, how do we decide who is to
blame and how much they should be punished? Linguistic
and contextual framing has been shown to affect people’s
reasoning in a variety of domains (e.g., Lee, Frederick, &
Ariely, 2006; Levin, 1987; Levin & Gaeth, 1988; Loftus,
Miller, & Burns, 1978; Loftus & Palmer, 1974; Shiv, Car-
mon, & Ariely, 2005; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, 1981),
including causal attribution (see Pickering & Majid, 2007,
for a recent review). In the present article, we build on this
work by exploring the effects of linguistic framing in a
domain of paramount real-world importance—blame and
punishment.
Linguistic descriptions are of course ubiquitous in legal
disputes. People linguistically frame incidents from the
very moment they occur and later in police reports, legal
statements, court testimony, and public discourse. Could
the linguistic descriptions of an event influence how much
we blame the people involved? Could language also influ-
ence how financially liable we think a person is for any re-
sulting damage? Could linguistic framing shape construal
even for well-known events (ones for which we already
have rich knowledge and established mental representa-
tions) and even when we can witness the event with our
own eyes?
The particular linguistic contrast of interest in the pres-
ent article is between transitive agentive descriptions and
intransitive nonagentive descriptions. A canonical agentive
description (e.g., Timberlake ripped the costume) includes
a person as the subject in a transitive expression describ-
ing a change of state (in this case, ripping). A canonical
nonagentive description (e.g., The costume ripped ) is in-
transitive and does not place the person as the subject for
the change-of-state event.1 Previous work has shown that
people are sensitive to this distinction between agentive
and nonagentive frames. For example, people are more
likely to remember the agent of an event when primed
with agentive language than when primed with nonagen-
tive language (e.g., Fausey, Long, Inamori, & Boroditsky,
in press). The attributional consequences of these linguis-
tic frames, however, are not well understood.
The linguistic contrast between agentive and nonagen-
tive frames has the potential to have serious real-world
consequences, especially in legal contexts. For example,
in the 197,745 trials held between 1674 and 1913 at Lon-
don’s central criminal court (Old Bailey Proceedings On-
line, 2009), cases with the agentive phrase “broke it” in
the court records resulted in a guilty verdict more often
than did cases with the nonagentive phrase “it broke”
(76% and 70% guilty, respectively), with similar patterns
for other consequential actions such as “burned it” versus
“it burned” [77% and 57% guilty, respectively; χ2(1, N 5
2,748) 5 11.04, p , .05]. In the most serious of cases
(when the charge was “killing”), the transitive/ intransitive
contrast as marked by different verbs also predicted ver-
dicts. Saying “killed” resulted in more guilty verdicts than
did saying “died” [65% and 56% guilty, respectively; χ2(1,
Subtle linguistic cues influence perceived
blame and financial liability
Ca i t l i n M. Fa u s e y a n d le r a Bo r o d i t s k y
Stanford University, Stanford, California
When bad things happen, how do we decide who is to blame and how much they should be punished? In the
present studies, we examined whether subtly different linguistic descriptions of accidents influence how much
people blame and punish those involved. In three studies, participants judged how much people involved in
particular accidents should be blamed and how much they should have to pay for the resulting damage. The
language used to describe the accidents differed subtly across conditions: Either agentive (transitive) or non-
agentive (intransitive) verb forms were used. Agentive descriptions led participants to attribute more blame
and request higher financial penalties than did nonagentive descriptions. Further, linguistic framing influenced
judgments, even when participants reasoned about a well-known event, such as the “wardrobe malfunction” of
Super Bowl 2004. Importantly, this effect of language held, even when people were able to see a video of the
event. These results demonstrate that even when people have rich established knowledge and visual informa-
tion about events, linguistic framing can shape event construal, with important real-world consequences. Subtle
differences in linguistic descriptions can change how people construe what happened, attribute blame, and dole
out punishment. Supplemental results and analyses may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals
.org/content/supplemental.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
2010, 17 (5), 644-650
doi:10.3758/PBR.17.5.644
C. M. Fausey, cfausey@indiana.edu
Li n g u i s t i c cu e s in f L u e n c e BL a m e 645
survey was one of many unrelated surveys in a packet pre-
sented to participants.
Method
Participants
. In partial fulfillment of a course requirement, 236
Stanford University students (96 male; mean age 5 19.22 years)
completed one survey: 116 read the agentive and 120 read the non-
agentive version of the story.
Materials
. Participants read either the agentive or the nonagen-
tive account about an individual (Mrs. Smith) who was involved in
a restaurant fire. They then answered two questions (Table 1). The
two accounts contain all of the same content words (all of the same
nouns, verbs, and adjectives are used), involve the same individual,
and describe the same outcomes. The accounts differ only in the
frames used to describe the accidental events (underlined sections
of Table 1): Transitive frames are used in the agentive account and
intransitive frames in the nonagentive account.
Results and Discussion
Linguistic framing influenced people’s judgments of
both blame and f inancial liability. Participants who read
the agentive account (M 5 4.83, SE 5 0.14) blamed
Mrs. Smith more than did participants who read the non-
agentive account (M 5 4.01, SE 5 0.15) [t(234) 5 4.04,
p , .001, d 5 .53]. A subtle difference in language caused
a big difference in dollars: Participants who got the agen-
tive report ruled that Mrs. Smith should pay $247 (36%)
more in fines (M 5 $935.17, SE 5 $43.48) than did par-
ticipants who got the nonagentive report (M 5 $688.75,
SE 5 $43.64) [t(234) 5 3.99, p , .001, d 5 .52].
In Study 1, linguistic framing influenced people’s judg-
ments of financial liability. One explanation for this re-
sult could be that Mrs. Smith was punished more harshly
because she had also been blamed more harshly. That is,
the effect of language on financial liability might be in-
direct, such that language influences blame, which then
determines punishment. Could language directly impact
N 5 3,814) 5 21.34, p , .05]. These examples suggest
that agentivity may be part of a suite of linguistic cues that
are influential in legal reasoning.
In a correlational analysis such as this, however, it is
impossible to determine whether different linguistic forms
actually caused a difference in verdicts. It could be that
agentive descriptions indeed led the court more often to
guilty verdicts. But it is also possible that people were
simply more likely to use agentive language in cases in
which the defendant was actually more guilty. Although
the attributional consequences of transitivity have not
been directly explored in the empirical literature, the ques-
tion has been debated—and adjudicated—in court. For
example, in a case petitioning to change the title of a bal-
lot measure (California’s high-profile Proposition 8 in the
2008 election titled “Eliminates right of same-sex couples
to marry”), the judge rejected the petitioners’ claim, ruling
that “There is nothing inherently argumentative or preju-
dicial about transitive verbs” (Jansson v. Bowen, 2008).
Few other questions in psycholinguistics have risen to a
sufficient level of civic importance to be ruled on in high
court.
With the high stakes of guilt, innocence, and the legality
of constitutional amendments on the line, it is important
to empirically establish whether agentive and nonagen-
tive frames indeed have any attributional consequences.
In the present article, we examine the effects of agentive
and nonagentive linguistic frames on important real-world
decisions about blame and punishment.
STUDY 1
In Study 1, participants read about an accidental restau-
rant fire that resulted in property damage. They then made
judgments about the person involved in the accident. The
Table 1
Studies 1 and 2, Reports and Questions
Agentive Report Nonagentive Report
Mrs. Smith and her friends were finishing a lovely dinner at their
favorite restaurant. After they settled the bill, they decided to head to
a nearby café for coffee and dessert. Mrs. Smith followed her friends
and as she stood up, she flopped her napkin on the centerpiece can-
dle. She had ignited the napkin! As Mrs. Smith reached to grab the
napkin, she toppled the candle and ignited the whole tablecloth too!
As she jumped back, she overturned the table and ignited the car pet,
as well. Hearing her desperate cries, the restaurant staff hurried over
and heroically managed to put the fire out before anyone got hurt.
Mrs. Smith and her friends were finishing a lovely dinner at their
favorite restaurant. After they settled the bill, they decided to head to
a nearby café for coffee and dessert. Mrs. Smith followed her friends
and as she stood up, her napkin flopped on the centerpiece candle.
The napkin had ignited! As Mrs. Smith reached to grab the nap-
kin, the candle toppled and the whole tablecloth ignited too! As she
jumped back, the table overturned and the carpet ignited, as well.
Hearing her desperate cries, the restaurant staff hurried over and he-
roically managed to put the fire out before anyone got hurt.
Questions for Study 1
Blame. Mrs. Smith is discussing the damage with the restaurant. How much should she be blamed for the fire?
(Likert scale from 1 to 7, anchored by Not at all to blame and Completely to blame)
Financial liability. The restaurant’s insurance policy does not cover minor f ires. The restaurant has sought legal action to require Mrs. Smith
to pay for the damage. Total costs to the restaurant were $1,500. How much should Mrs. Smith be required to pay?
Questions for Study 2
Financial liability. The restaurant’s insurance policy does not cover minor f ires and so the restaurant has sought legal action to require
Mrs. Smith to pay for the damage. An independent review panel used their standard blame assessment scale in reviewing this case. On this
scale, 0 means not at all to blame and 8 means completely to blame. The panel gave Mrs. Smith a {1,4,7}. The total costs to the restaurant
were $1,500.
How much should Mrs. Smith be required to pay?
646 fa u s e y a n d Bo r o d i t s k y
financial liability and agentive framing led to greater f i-
nancial liability than did nonagentive framing. This finding
replicates the result from Study 1. Further, sentencing it-
self appears to be susceptible to linguistic framing effects.
Results from the first two studies suggest that agentive
and nonagentive language can shape how people attribute
blame and f inancial liability to individuals involved in ac-
cidents. Of course, in these two studies, the only informa-
tion that reasoners had about the accident was linguistic.
Were people inevitably swayed by language because it was
the only thing that guided what they imagined about the
event? Perhaps people who received differently phrased
reports imagined substantially different scenarios of what
happened? In many real-life situations, the information
we have about an event is purely linguistic (e.g., in court
arguments, insurance claims, and news accounts). But, in
other situations, we may also have visual evidence, either
by being eyewitnesses or by viewing videotape. Would
linguistic framing still have an effect even if people were
able to see the event? Further, the restaurant fire described
in Studies 1 and 2 was a novel event, one for which par-
ticipants had no other previous information. Would people
be so easily influenced by linguistic framing if they were
reasoning about an event that they already knew some-
thing about, for which they already had a rich set of men-
tal representations?
To address these questions, we capitalized on a widely
known, much discussed, well-publicized, and video-
recorded event: the “wardrobe malfunction” of Super
Bowl 2004, when a performance by Justin Timberlake
and Janet Jackson ended with Janet Jackson’s breast
being exposed on national television. Postexperiment
questioning conf irmed that this is indeed a well-known
judgments of financial liability? This question is impor-
tant because of the somewhat flexible sentencing process
that occurs after guilt judgments in legal decision making.
A direct impact of language on sentencing would be an
important applied result. Study 2 was designed to address
this question.
STUDY 2
In Study 2, participants got an agentive or nonagentive
accident description and also learned of a blame attribution
generated by an independent review panel. This panel at-
tributed low, middle, or high blame to the person involved
in the accident. After learning how blameworthy other
people judged the person to be, participants determined
the person’s f inancial liability for the property damage.
This paradigm allows us to target the independent role of
language on financial liability sentences. People’s deci-
sions about financial liability may be guided by blame-
worthiness, language, or both.
Method
Participants
. In partial fulfillment of a course requirement, 179
Stanford University students (59 male; mean age 5 19.01 years)
completed one survey: 91 read the agentive account of the restaurant
fire accident (33 low, 30 middle, and 28 high blame), and 88 read the
nonagentive account (33 low, 28 middle, and 27 high blame).
Materials
. As in Study 1, participants read either the agentive or
the nonagentive narrative and then answered the financial liability
question shown in Table 1. Thus, participants in Study 2 answered
only the financial liability question, after learning that an indepen-
dent panel judged the person to be either a 1 (low), a 4 (middle), or
a 7 (high) in terms of blame.
Results
The level of blame assigned by the independent panel
influenced participants’ judgments of financial liability
(Figure 1). Overall, people judged that Mrs. Smith should
pay more in damages when the independent panel ruled
her to be highly to blame (M 5 $974.19, SE 5 $61.97)
than when the panel assigned her a middle level of blame
(M 5 $615.00, SE 5 $56.27) and then when she was ruled
to be of low blame (M 5 $425.63, SE 5 $50.89).
Interestingly, language also influenced financial li-
ability judgments. As in Study 1, a subtle change in lan-
guage led to a substantial change in f inancial liability:
Mrs. Smith was held responsible for $153 (or 26%) more
in damages by people who got the agentive report (M 5
$730.75, SE 5 $49.57) than by those who got the non-
agentive report (M 5 $577.77, SE 5 $52.35).
A 3 (blame: low, middle, high) 3 2 (language: agentive,
nonagentive) factorial ANOVA revealed reliable main ef-
fects of assigned blame level [F(2,173) 5 25.23, p , .001,
h2 5 .22] and of language [F(1,173) 5 5.53, p 5 .02, h2 5
.03]. Assigned blame level and language did not interact
[F(2,173) 5 1.40, n.s.].
Discussion
Guilt and linguistic framing independently influenced
how much someone was required to pay for accidental
property damage. Increasing assigned blame led to greater
Figure 1. Independent contributions of guilt and linguistic
framing to financial liability sentences (Study 2). Mean values
are plotted on the y-axis, with whiskers representing 61 SEM.
Financial Liability (Dollars)
0
300
600
900
1,200
1,500
LowMid
Blame
Agentive
High Overall
Nonagentive
Li n g u i s t i c cu e s in f L u e n c e BL a m e 647
Blame. Linguistic framing influenced people’s blame
attributions (Figure 2A). Overall, people blamed Tim-
berlake more after reading agentive (M 5 38.76%, SE 5
1.59%) than after reading nonagentive (M 5 30.49%,
SE 5 1.43%) language [F(1,583) 5 17.94, p , .001, h2 5
.03]. The effect of language was seen across the three con-
ditions, with no interaction of the effect of language 3
condition [F(2,583) 5 0.15, n.s.].
Language also affected attributions to chance. Over-
all, people attributed the outcome to chance more after
event: Nearly all of our participants (96.9%) had heard
about it, and many had also seen the video (67.9%) before
the experiment. With prior knowledge, and current visual
evidence, could linguistic framing still influence blame
and punishment?
STUDY 3
In Study 3, participants reasoned about the wardrobe
malfunction incident under one of three conditions: They
read about the incident, or they first read about the incident
and then watched the video, or they f irst watched the video
and then read about it. In each condition, people read either
an agentive or a nonagentive account of the incident.
METHOD
Participants
. Five hundred eighty-nine participants (188 male;
mean age 5 31.17 years) were paid for completing one survey on-
line. Participants were recruited from the pool of English speak-
ers who use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com). Three
hundred six read the agentive account of the event (116 read only,
88 read then watch, and 102 watch then read) and 283 read the non-
agentive account of the event (93 read only, 106 read then watch, and
84 watch then read).
Materials and Design
. Participants read either the agentive
or nonagentive account of the “wardrobe malfunction” incident
(Table 2). In two conditions, participants viewed a video of the final
6 sec of the performance, which included the infamous malfunction
(www.youtube.com/watch?v5O6j-OKvydPI).
After reading about the incident (and also watching it on video,
in two of the conditions), participants answered the questions shown
in Table 2. The order of the three response options was randomized,
and the particular order presented to each participant was the same
for the blame and financial liability judgments. Because Timberlake
initiated movement right before the “wardrobe malfunction” and also
because of his prominent apology to Super Bowl viewers (in which
he coined the phrase “wardrobe malfunction”; Timberlake, 2004),
our narratives focused on the actions of Timberlake. As a result, we
expected that any effects of linguistic framing should be strongest for
judging the guilt and financial liability of Timberlake. Also, because
the FCC tried to fine CBS for broadcasting the incident, CBS was
included among the possible targets for financial liability.
Results
In brief, linguistic framing affected people’s judgments
of blame and financial liability in all conditions: Lan-
guage mattered, whether it was presented before, after, or
without video evidence. The main results of interest are
shown in Figure 2.
Conclusions from these data are the same, whether all
three framing contexts are considered (as reported below)
or whether only the two multimodal contexts are consid-
ered. Conclusions are also supported by nonparametric
analyses (see the supplementary materials).
Effects of language on blame and financial li-
ability
. Blame and financial liability attributions were
analyzed using a 2 (language: agentive, nonagentive) 3 3
(task context: read only, read then watch, watch then read)
factorial ANOVA for each dependent measure. For clarity
of presentation, we focus on effects of language here (see
the supplementary materials for effects of task context).
Language and task context never interacted.
Figure 2. Language changes punishment of an observed indi-
vidual (Study 3). (A) Blame attribution to Timberlake. (B) Finan-
cial liability to Timberlake. Mean values are plotted on the y-axis,
with whiskers representing 61 SEM.
Blame
0
20
10
30
40
50
60
Frame
Only
Frame
First
Agentive
Frame
Second
Frame
Overall
Nonagentive
A
Financial Liability (in Dollars)
0
50,000
25,000
75,000
100,000
125,000
150,000
Frame
Only
Frame
First
Frame
Second
Frame
Overall
B
648 fa u s e y a n d Bo r o d i t s k y
guage led to harsher punishment than did nonagentive lan-
guage. Replicating results from the first two studies, lin-
guistic framing not only influenced attributions of blame,
but also influenced assessments of financial liability. In
the case of the wardrobe malfunction incident, an agen-
tive report led people to think that Justin Timberlake owed
more than $30,000 more (an extra 53%) in fines compared
with a nonagentive report. In real-world contexts, visual
evidence of accidents is rarely presented in the absence of
linguistic framing. These results suggest that the form of
this framing guides punishment.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
In three studies, linguistic framing influenced partici-
pants’ judgments about blame and punishment. Financial
liability judgments, in particular, were strongly affected by
linguistic framing: Agentive descriptions led to 30%–50%
more in requested financial damages than did nonagentive
descriptions. Judgments of financial liability were affected
by linguistic frame even when blame was held constant.
This finding suggests that linguistic framing can have an
influence not only on verdicts of guilt and innocence, but
also on the sentencing process. In Study 3, linguistic fram-
ing influenced reasoning even about an event that people
knew a lot about, had seen before, and witnessed (again)
right before judging the individual involved.
Previous inquiries into effects of language on attribution
have examined the role of verbs, voice, and word order in
guiding how people determine the cause of an event (e.g.,
Brown & Fish, 1983; Garvey, Caramazza, & Yates, 1975;
Kasof & Lee, 1993; Kassin & Lowe, 1979; Pryor & Kriss,
1977; Schmid & Fiedler, 1998; Semin, Rubini, & Fiedler,
1995). Here, we provide the f irst report on the impact of
transitivity both on people’s attributions of blame and also
on the real-world outcomes of these attributions (punish-
ment). These studies extend previous research in several
important ways. First, we probed people’s decisions about
a concrete form of punishment—financial liability, freely
estimated in dollars—in addition to more abstract ratings
of blame. Second, we examined effects of linguistic fram-
reading nonagentive (M 5 42.87%, SE 5 2.40%) than
after reading agentive (M 5 33.92%, SE 5 2.26%) lan-
guage [F(1,583) 5 8.99, p 5 .003, h2 5 .01]. Again, this
effect of language was seen across the three conditions,
with no interaction of the effect of language 3 condition
[F(2,583) 5 0.20, n.s.].
Financial liability. The modal response for f inancial
liability was $0 (57.2% of all data). This is likely because
the sentence “Eventually the fine was dismissed in court”
appeared in the liability question. Nevertheless, the lin-
guistic framing of the event influenced people’s judg-
ments about financial liability. Overall, the proportion of
people who gave any nonzero amount of financial liabil-
ity to Timberlake depended on linguistic framing. 46.7%
assigned a nonzero fine after reading agentive language,
whereas only 38.5% did so after reading nonagentive lan-
guage [χ2(1,N 5 589) 5 4.05, p 5 .044].
The amount of money for which Timberlake was held
liable likewise depended on linguistic framing (Fig-
ure 2B). Participants who got the agentive report asked
that Timberlake pay an extra $30,828.69 (53%) more
in f ines than did those who got the nonagentive report
[MAgentive 5 $88,818.12, SE 5 $8,115.75; MNonagentive 5
$57,989.43, SE 5 $6,465.34; F(1,575) 5 10.31, p 5 .001,
h2 5 .02].2 Again, there was no interaction of the effect of
language 3 condition [F(2,575) 5 1.22, n.s.].
Agentive and nonagentive linguistic framing did not af-
fect people’s attributions of blame or financial liability to
Janet Jackson or CBS (see the supplementary materials).
In an additional set of analyses, all of the reported con-
trasts were conducted with an additional factor: whether
or not the participant reported having seen the video of
this incident prior to the experiment. This factor was not
a reliable main effect nor did it interact with effects of
linguistic framing in any of the analyses.
Discussion
Linguistic framing influenced how much people pun-
ished an individual involved in an event, even when they
witnessed the event, and even though the event was one
that our participants already knew about. Agentive lan-
Table 2
Study 3 Reports and Questions
Agentive Report Nonagentive Report
Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson performed during the 2004
Super Bowl Half-time Show. Toward the end of the song, Timber-
lake followed Jackson across the stage and stood beside her. As they
sang the last line, Timberlake reached across the front of Jackson’s
body. In this final dance move, he unfastened a snap and tore part of
the bodice! He slid the cover right off Jackson’s chest! This incident
made for a lot of controversy.
Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson performed during the 2004
Super Bowl Half-time Show. Toward the end of the song, Timberlake
followed Jackson across the stage and stood beside her. As they sang
the last line, Timberlake reached across the front of Jackson’s body.
In this final dance move, a snap unfastened and part of the bodice
tore! The cover slid right off Jackson’s chest! This incident made for
a lot of controversy.
Questions
Blame. In your opinion, was someone to blame or was it just chance?
Please allocate the percentage of blame. Be sure your numbers add up to 100%!
Response options: Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Chance
Financial liability. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) tried to fine CBS $550,000 for this incident. Eventually the fine was
dismissed in court. How much do you think each of the parties below should have been fined for this incident?
Response options: Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, CBS
Li n g u i s t i c cu e s in f L u e n c e BL a m e 649
how they construe and reason about what happened. In the
case of agentive and nonagentive language, subtle differ-
ences in linguistic framing can have important real-world
consequences. Deciding how much to blame an individual
and how much to hold them financially liable appears to be
broadly susceptible to linguistic framing.
AUTHOR NOTE
We thank V. Vanchinathan and N. Heitz for help with data collection
and entry. The present research was supported by an NSF Graduate Re-
search Fellowship to C.M.F. and NSF Grant No. 0608514 to L.B. Ad-
dress correspondence to C. M. Fausey, Department of Psychological and
Brain Sciences, 1101 E. 10th Street, Indiana University, Bloomington,
IN 47405 (e-mail: cfausey@indiana.edu).
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doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1998.tb01672.x
Semin, G. R., Rubini, M., & Fiedler, K. (1995). The answer is in the
question: The effect of verb causality upon locus of explanation. Per-
sonality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 834-842.
ing in a rich knowledge context: People had current visual
evidence and also previous knowledge about the framed
event. This richness characterizes many real-world rea-
soning situations, but few previous attribution framing
studies. Finally, we considered the transitive/intransitive
alternation, a property of event description that both has
important real-world consequences and differs interest-
ingly across languages.
Previous work has shown that languages differ from one
another in their preference for agentive versus nonagen-
tive frames (e.g., Fausey & Boroditsky, in press; Fausey
et al., in press). The present f indings raise the possibility
that speakers of different languages may prescribe more
or less severe punishment as a function of the frequency
of particular linguistic frames in their language. Although
there have been many demonstrations showing the power
of linguistic frames in shaping people’s decisions, there
has not been much contact between such findings and
the literature investigating cross-linguistic differences in
cognition. Establishing that linguistic framing has psy-
chological consequences in a domain where languages
naturally differ from one another opens the possibility for
connecting these two rich bodies of knowledge.
In particular, as Sher and McKenzie (2006) have
pointed out, the linguistic frames typically provided in
framing studies often are not informationally equivalent.
Each linguistic description is situated in a set of prag-
matic norms within a language, and participants may be
responding to the pragmatic cues implied by the choice of
frame. The possibility of cross-linguistic comparisons of-
fers an exciting extension to the framing literature: Rather
than having frames provided by an experimenter, in the
cross-linguistic case, speakers of different languages may
self-generate different frames for the same events because
of the prevalent patterns in their respective languages
(e.g., Maass, Karasawa, Politi, & Suga, 2006). In this way,
cross-linguistic comparisons may allow us to investigate
conceptual framing, not just as a phenomenon in the com-
municative context (where participants may use pragmatic
information to infer what the experimenter must mean by
their choice of frame), but also in contexts where the par-
ticipants naturally frame events for themselves.
The linguistic (and cross-linguistic) framing of agen-
tivity is of particular importance in court proceedings.
Filipovic´ (2007) highlighted a case from Northern Cali-
fornia, in which a Spanish-speaking suspect’s nonagentive
(and appropriate in Spanish) description of events (“se me
cayó,” roughly “to me it happened that she fell”) was trans-
lated into English for the broader court into the agentive
(and appropriate in English) “I dropped her.” Do these two
descriptions mean the same thing? Or does this change
in framing have serious attributional consequences? Our
results raise the possibility that speakers of different lan-
guages may arrive at rather different conclusions regard-
ing blame and punishment for the same events.
In three studies, we find that agentive descriptions of
events invite more blame and more severe punishment than
do nonagentive descriptions. These results demonstrate that
even when people have knowledge and visual information
about events, linguistic framing can significantly shape
650 fa u s e y a n d Bo r o d i t s k y
2. Eight participants whose financial liability responses exceeded
$550,000 were excluded from this analysis.
These conclusions are the same when analyses consider just those par-
ticipants who assigned Timberlake a nonzero fine (n 5 244). Among
these participants, those who got the agentive report assigned more fines
(M 5 $193,726.47, SE 5 $12,893.53) than did those who got the non-
agentive report (M 5 $153,179.61, SE 5 $12,430.78) [t(242) 5 2.22,
p 5 .028].
These data show some heteroscedasticity, but our main conclusions
remain the same after appropriate corrections. A t test that did not as-
sume equal variances confirmed a reliable difference between the f i-
nancial liabilities assigned by participants who got agentive versus non-
agentive reports [t(559.36) 5 2.97, p 5 .003]. The main effect of task
context (see the supplementary materials) was similarly confirmed by a
Welch ANOVA test [F(2, 371.55) 5 3.24, p 5 .04].
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS
Additional results from Study 3 and nonparametric analyses of all
study results may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals
.org/content/supplemental.
(Manuscript submitted November 6, 2009;
revision accepted for publication April 22, 2010.)
Sher, S., & McKenzie, C. R. M. (2006). Information leakage from
logically equivalent frames. Cognition, 101, 467-494. doi:10.1016/j
.cognition.2005.11.001
Shiv, B., Carmon, Z., & Ariely, D. (2005). Placebo effects of market-
ing actions: Consumers may get what they pay for. Journal of Market-
ing Research, 42, 383-393. doi:10.1509/jmkr.2005.42.4.383
Timberlake, J. (February 1, 2004). “Statement From Justin Timber-
lake,” PR Newswire.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judg-
ing frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 207-232.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and
the psychology of choice. Science, 211, 453-458.
White, P. A. (2003). Effects of wording and stimulus format on the use
of contingency information in causal judgment. Memory & Cognition,
31, 231-242.
NOTES
1. Note that the agentive/nonagentive distinction we draw here is dif-
ferent from the distinction between active and passive voice (e.g., He
ripped the costume vs. The costume was ripped by him). The active/
passive distinction has been shown to shift focus to or away from the
agent (e.g., Garvey, Caramazza, & Yates, 1975; Kassin & Lowe, 1979;
White, 2003). Here we focus on transitivity and investigate not just the
attributional consequences of transitivity (blame) but also the concrete
real-world outcomes of these attributions (punishment).
