Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp

The inuence of desire and knowledge on perception of each other and

related mental states, and different mechanisms for blame
Sean M. Laurent a,, Narina L. Nuez b, Kimberly A. Schweitzer b
a
b

University of Oregon, 1227 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA

University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University Drive, Laramie, WY 82071, USA

H I G H L I G H T S

Knowledge and desire affect blame through different routes.

Knowledge and desire affect perception of each other, perception of related mental states, and immorality.
Knowledge affects perceived awareness through blame.
Desire affects blame through judgments of agent immorality and perceived awareness.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 31 May 2014
Revised 11 April 2015
Accepted 28 April 2015
Available online 30 April 2015
Keywords:
Knowledge
Desire
Blame
Mental states
Negligence
Morality
Moral psychology

a b s t r a c t
Two experiments (Experiment 1 N = 350; Experiment 2 N = 153), used relatively simple (Experiment 1) and
complex (Experiment 2) vignettes to investigate whether two ostensibly distinct mental states that underlie intentionality judgments inuence each other, related mental states, and agent morality, and also whether they affect blame through different routes. Knowledge (that a particular action can lead to a particular outcome)
affected perceptions of an agent's desire by rst increasing blame, which increased perceptions that the agent
was aware of acting, while acting. Desire (for a particular outcome) affected blame and perceptions of agent
knowledge by increasing perceptions that the agents were immoral (measured after knowledge and desire
were described, but before the agents' action and the harmful outcomes were described), which inuenced perceptions of the agents' awareness. The importance of these ndings for mental state perception research, including the relationship of mental states to blame, is discussed.
2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Understanding others' mental states is a vitally important aspect of
human social interactions. Not only does perception of others' mental
states aid in understanding their motives, actions, and character
(e.g., Reeder, 2009a, 2009b), it helps perceivers select appropriate responses to what others say and do. For example, knowing that someone
wishes you harm, you may choose to avoid or confront that person. Surmising that a friend is blue, you might console or offer help. Simply put,
understanding of or beliefs about the contents of others' minds shapes
perceivers' reactions to and behavior toward them (Malle & Hodges,
2005).
Understanding mental states is particularly important when trying
to evaluate how blameworthy an agent is for bringing about a harmful
Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, 1227
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA.
E-mail addresses: slaurent@uoregon.edu, seanmlaurent@gmail.com (S.M. Laurent).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.04.009
0022-1031/ 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

outcome, and most theoretical models describing how people blame

take this into account (e.g., Alicke, 2000, 2008; Heider, 1958; Shaver,
1985). That is, reasoning about mental states such as whether an
agent wanted to cause harm, foresaw the potential for harm in an action, or acted intentionally to fulll a goal of harming aids perceivers
in determining how responsible, blameworthy, and deserving of punishment the agent is. For example, Lagnado and Channon (2008)
found that relative to difcult-to-foresee harms or harms that resulted
from unintentional actions, foreseeable and intentional harms were
rated as more blameworthy and caused by agents' actions. Similarly, relative to negligent or reckless actions, intentional actions that lead to
harm are seen as more blameworthy and deserving of punishment
(Darley & Pittman, 2003; Malle & Nelson, 2003; Nobes, Panagiotaki, &
Pawson, 2009; Shultz & Wright, 1985).
Intentionality judgments are complex but can be made quite quickly
(e.g., Malle & Holbrook, 2012), even though many theoretical models
suggest that judgments regarding several distinct mental states are required prior to an agent's action being considered intentional. For

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S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

example, along with requisite elements such as ability/skill or effort

expended, most models of intentionality include or specically require
the presence of mental states such as belief/knowledge, desire, awareness, and intent (e.g., Adams, 1986; Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965;
Malle & Knobe, 1997; Shaver, 1985). Although research has begun to investigate the relative contributions to blame of different mental states
that underlie intentionality judgments (e.g., Cushman, 2008; Nuez,
Laurent, & Gray, 2014), little is known about whether perception of
certain mental states inuences perception of other presumably distinct
mental states. Moreover, little is known about the routes through which
different mental state inferences affect blame. The current paper considers how desire and knowledge may reciprocally inuence each
other, related mental states, and agent morality, and the different routes
by which these mental states impact blame.

2. The role of desire in blame

Desire plays an important role in intentionality judgments because
intentional action typically serves agents' hopes of bringing about the
outcomes they desire (e.g., Malle & Knobe, 1997). However, without
the conjoint presence of other mental states such as knowledge or
awareness, desire should not be particularly blameworthy. That is, desiring that harm befall someone a feeling that many people may, in
their less proud moments, admit to does not imply an intention to
act in a way that will bring it about.
Although it seems obvious that wishing someone harm should not, on
its own, rationally lead to blame, there are reasons to believe that it might,
particularly when the desired outcome occurs and the desiring agent
plays a causal role in bringing about the outcome (e.g., Cushman, 2008).
One reason for this is that desiring (or admitting to desiring) harm is
non-normative (e.g., Guglielmo & Malle, 2010; Uttich & Lombrozo,
2010) and socially informative. With other factors held constant, moral
people should typically not want to see others harmed, suggesting that
people who wish others harm might be seen as immoral. Because social
perceivers like it when bad people get their just desserts (Darley &
Pittman, 2003), it becomes easier to understand why perceivers irrationally blame and punish moral transgressions (e.g., hypocrisy; Laurent,
Clark, Walker, & Wiseman, 2014). In addition, because desire is implicated
in antisocial motives for action and informs character judgments (Reeder,
2009a, 2009b), when an agent wants to see someone harmed and does
something that leads to the desired outcome occurring, perceivers may
label the person as bad and assume the agent somehow engineered
the outcome.
The idea of a route from desire to blame is also consistent with
Alicke's (2000) culpable control model. For example, the blamevalidation hypothesis posits that when harm occurs, blame may be
the default attribution (p. 558), leading people to process information
in a biased way that results in holding a causal agent accountable. According to the culpable control model, biases in how people blame can
affect their evaluation of links anywhere in the mind-to-behavior-toconsequence sequence. As one example, perceivers may have spontaneous negative reactions to a harmful actionoutcome sequence based on
a dislike of agents' motives or values. One way spontaneous reactions
may increase blame is by altering perceptions of agents' mental states
and the relation of these states to the behavior that caused the outcome.
Thus, perceivers' reactions to an agent's unsavory desires, which provides a cue to motives and suggests values, might rst negatively impact
evaluations of the agent's character. Subsequently, character evaluations could inuence perceptions of blame, leading to changes in the
way people reason about an agent's volitional control (Alicke, 2000),
such as by increasing the perception that the agent foresaw the risk of
harm, particularly when the desired harm actually occurs. This suggests
that when a desired harm occurs as a result of an agent's action, the
presence of desire could inuence blame through evaluations of moral
character, subsequently affecting beliefs that the agent was aware of

acting, and thus possessed knowledge linking their action to the outcome, validating the impulse to blame.
2.1. The role of knowledge (and awareness) in blame
Depending on interpretation, knowledge is often loosely equated
with foresight and dened as a belief that one's action will have a particular consequence (e.g., Malle & Knobe, 1997; Shaver, 1985). This denition appears to imply either a present-moment action or an intention to
act and bring about a desired outcome. However, knowledge can also be
conceptualized more abstractly as a simple understanding of potential
causal relations between actions and outcomes. That is, to know that
one's action will have a particular consequence, one must rst know
that certain types of actions or classes of actions have the potential to
bring about certain types of outcomes or classes of outcomes. Using
this denition, knowledge informs subjective foreseeability (Lagnado
& Channon, 2008) at a basic level (i.e., whether an agent could plausibly
foresee or have foreseen the consequences of an action); however, it does
not imply that any action has been or will be taken or that any outcome
has occurred or will occur. That is, although most people know that certain actions can cause harm, their possession of knowledge does not
imply their performance of these actions or plans to perform them.
Whether a person should reasonably foresee or should have foreseen the potential for harm (e.g., reasonable foreseeability; Lagnado &
Channon, 2008) can be shown to depend on the type of knowledge
being considered, as well as on the person's level of awareness of
performing a particular action linked to that knowledge. General or
common knowledge subsumes knowledge that most people possess
or are reasonably expected to possess. For example, a person who
hates guns, has never red one, and intends never to do so probably
knows (and would be reasonably expected to know) that pulling the
trigger on a pistol, when the pistol is loaded and aimed at someone,
will probably lead to the person being injured or killed. In addition to
common knowledge, some knowledge is privileged or specialized, in
that not all people would be expected to possess it, diminishing reasonable expectation for some people but increasing it for others. For
example, while a friend of Person P might know that P is allergic to
strawberries, and would therefore have knowledge regarding the effect
of feeding P strawberries, not all people would be expected to have this
knowledge.
Although knowledge in this sense is not noteworthy, it strongly
suggests the presence of foresight when combined with awareness
of performing the action one knows is linked to the possibility of
harm. However, awareness itself is a complex mental state, because
actions themselves can be construed or identied at different levels
(e.g., Vallacher & Wegner, 2012), and agents may or may not be aware
of the full scope of their actions. Continuing with the gun example, a person might pull the trigger on a gun they think is unloaded and end up
harming someone because a bullet was in the chamber. In this case, the
agent may have awareness while acting of pulling a trigger on a gun,
but not of pulling the trigger on a loaded gun, so no foresight should be
attributed. However, it could be argued that the agent should have been
aware of the full scope of his action (i.e., he should have taken care that
the gun was not loaded before pulling the trigger if there was no intent
to harm). Similarly, P's friend might be aware of innocently offering her
a sip of juice purchased at a health store without being aware that the
juice contains strawberries. But if the friend is aware the juice contains
strawberries, and knowledge is also present, her awareness of acting
suggests foresight and perhaps the intent to harm. Thus, only when
knowledge is combined with full awareness should foresight be rationally
and fully attributed. Following this line of reasoning, expectations for foreseeability can arise not only from expectations for knowledge when
awareness is present (e.g., that ring guns can cause harm or that P is allergic to strawberries), but also from expectations for awareness when
knowledge is present (e.g., that one is pulling the trigger on a loaded
gun or that one is offering a drink containing strawberries).

S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

In our view, when considering how blameworthy an agent is for an

ostensibly unintended outcome, the task of rational social perceivers is
(among other things) to determine whether knowledge and awareness
were both present in full, and if not, to what extent each state should
have been present. However, when it comes to blame, social perceivers
are not always (or perhaps, not even usually) rational. Consider again
Alicke's (2000) blame-validation hypothesis. If perceivers are motivated
to assign blame and they reason about an agent who possesses knowledge and whose action (linked to the knowledge) causes harm, their
rst impulse might be to blame the causal agent, and then in a process
of blame validation, inate their perceptions of the agent's awareness
of acting (i.e., alter their perceptions of the agent's foresight). That is,
when an agent lacks awareness that she or he reasonably should possess, the presence of knowledge might bias perceivers' judgments that
awareness was actually present because of a desire to blame the
agent. And even when awareness is reasonably absent (i.e., the agent
could not be reasonably aware of the full scope of her or his action), to
the extent that perceivers think the agent had knowledge, they may
again exaggerate awareness to validate their blaming. It is only a short
jump then to hypothesize how knowledge could indirectly effect
perceptions of an agent's desire to harm through increases in blame
and awareness: If an agent knows some action can cause harm and
the outcome occurs, prompting attributions of blame, this might subsequently affect perceptions that the agent in fact wanted the outcome to
occur.

2.2. The present experiments

The analysis presented above suggests that routes from knowledge
and desire to blame may differ. When awareness is claimed as absent
but an agent's actions cause harm, knowledge or perceptions of knowledge should affect perceptions that the agent deserves blame and was
aware of acting. It is also possible that judgments of blame will mediate
perceptions of awareness. In turn, the knowledge to blame to awareness
path should further mediate perceptions regarding the agent's desire,
because increased blame should prompt perceivers to attribute awareness (or the reverse), and awareness of action (i.e., when the agent
knows the action could cause harm and acts, leading to the outcome)
suggests the agent desired the harm.
When an agent's actions lead to harm, desire should primarily
increase beliefs that the agent is immoral, but might also have total effects on blaming the agent and perceptions about the agent's possession
of awareness. Immorality should mediate perceptions of blame and
awareness. Finally, the desire to immorality to awareness and blame
links should also mediate perceived knowledge.
To test these hypotheses, in Experiment 1 we adapted a simple scenario used by Nuez et al. (2014), where a woman fries chicken for a
liked or disliked friend using cooking oil containing peanut oil. The
friend, severely allergic to peanuts, gets sick. The agent, while aware
of acting in the general sense, had no awareness of the scope of her action, because she never read the label on the oil (i.e., although aware of
cooking with oil, she was unaware of cooking with oil that contained
peanut oil). Desire (i.e., to see the friend harmed) and knowledge
(i.e., of the friend's allergy, and thus of the potential link between an action and an outcome) were independently manipulated. In Experiment
2, we created a new, more complex scenario, where (among a variety of
extraneous background details) a man (the agent) tells his housemate's
girlfriend that the housemate is at a female friend's house. The girlfriend
subsequently breaks up with the housemate. Among other details, desire was manipulated by describing the agent as romantically interested
or not in the housemate's girlfriend. Knowledge was manipulated by
describing that the agent knew or did not know about a conict
between the housemate and his girlfriend that involved an unknown
(to the agent) ex-girlfriend. In all cases, the agent's awareness of the
scope of his actions was deliberately limited so that he could not have

29

rationally foreseen the potential for harm in his action. The full scenarios
for both experiments are available in Appendix A.
In both experiments, to provide a strong causal test of the desire to
immorality to blame (and other mental states) hypothesis, participants
were rst presented with information detailing the agents' mental
states (i.e., manipulations of desire and knowledge). At this point,
moral judgments were assessed. Following this, the agents' actions
were described along with the harmful outcomes. Last, we collected
data on the remaining dependent variables.

3. Experiment 1
3.1. Method
3.1.1. Participants
Two samples were collected. The rst was 160 U.S. citizens aged 18
or above, recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk website and
paid $0.20 (69% male, MAge = 29.01, SD = 9.72, range = 1867). The
second was 201 undergraduate students (32.8% male, MAge = 19.80,
SD = 2.27) who participated in partial fulllment of course requirements. After deleting cases for multiple responding or incorrect responses to a simple (arithmetic) attention check question (6.9% of the
Internet sample only), the nal sample was N = 350.

3.1.2. Procedure
After providing consent, participants read a short vignette (Nuez
et al., 2014; see Appendix A). In it, Annie invites Julia to dinner.
Annie is described as behind on time as she hastily prepares fried chicken using cooking oil containing a small amount of peanut oil. However,
Annie never read the label, so she lacks awareness of the full scope of
her action (i.e., she is not aware, while using the oil, of the oil's composition). Julia, who is severely allergic to peanuts, gets very sick after eating the chicken. The crossed manipulation of knowledge and desire
(described below) came rst, followed by questions about Annie's immorality. Participants then read about Annie's action (cooking the
chicken in the oil) and the outcome (the friend getting ill) before
responding to the remaining dependent variables. Last, participants answered an attention check question and provided basic demographic
information.

3.1.3. Knowledge and desire manipulations

Knowledge was manipulated by describing that Annie knows (does
not know) Julia has a severe peanut allergy, and therefore knows
(could not know) the risk of exposing her to peanuts. Desire was manipulated by describing that Annie cares deeply for (secretly resents) Julia
and would hate (wishes) to see her suffer.
3.1.4. Dependent variables1
Participants rated their agreement with statements measured on
10-point scales (1 = completely disagree, 10 = completely agree).
Responses were averaged to form composite measures (items were
reverse-scored where appropriate) and higher scores indicate greater
endorsement of each construct. Reliability coefcients or correlations
are given in parentheses. Participants completed variables in the order
presented below.
1
Three items also measured the wrongness of Annie's actions. This variable was very
strongly correlated with the blame measure (r = .94) and analyses did not substantively
differ when using wrongness versus blame. We report the blame variable here, which
most closely represents the construct of interest. Additionally, three items measured
whether Annie should have been aware of the scope of her actions and the risk of harm,
and two variables measured Annie's awareness of the risk of her actions. Because these
variables did not clearly represent simple measures of awareness, but instead measured
aspects of foresight or expectations for foresight, no analysis of these variables is reported.

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S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

3.1.5. Immorality ( = .97)

Five items measured moral judgments: Annie is a good person,
a bad person, a decent person, moral, immoral.
3.1.6. Awareness (r = .64)
Two items measured Annie's awareness of acting: Annie was aware,
while preparing dinner, that the oil she was using contained some peanut
oil and Using that cooking oil that contained peanut oil, Annie was
aware of what she was doing.
3.1.7. Blame ( = .90)
Three items measured blame/responsibility: Annie should be
held responsible for the harm to Julia, deserves to be blamed for what
happened to her friend Julia. It is Annie's fault that Julia got sick.
3.1.8. Perceived knowledge ( = .99)
Four items measured perceived knowledge: Annie knew (did not
know) her friend Julia was allergic to peanuts, that if Julia ate peanuts
she would get sick.
3.1.9. Perceived desire ( = .98)
Five items measured perceived desire: Annie wanted (did not
want) her friend Julia to suffer. Annie hoped something bad
would happen to her friend Julia, didn't want anything bad to happen
to her friend Julia, wished harm would befall Julia.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Total effects
All measures were examined using 2 (knowledge present vs.
absent) 2 (desire present vs. absent) ANOVAs2 (df were 1, 346 in all
analyses; see Table 1 for M, SD, d, and p of all measured variables as a
function of knowledge and desire and for correlations among the
variables). As expected, knowledge had a total effect on perceived
knowledge (F = 1599.51, p b .001), blame (F = 125.37, p b .001) and
awareness (F = 16.88, p b .001), but not on perceived desire (p = .55).
The total effect of knowledge on immorality was marginally signicant
(F = 2.99, p = .085). Desire had a total effect on perceived desire (F =
1138.77, p b .001), immorality (F = 606.22, p b .001), blame (F = 9.94,
p = .002), and awareness (F = 26.22, p b .001), but had no total effect
on perceived knowledge (p = .49). A signicant interaction between
the manipulations emerged for immorality (F = 5.23, p = .02). Followup analyses showed that knowledge signicantly inuenced immorality
when desire was present (p = .02) but not absent (p = .63). Desire signicantly impacted immorality at both levels of knowledge (ps b .001).
Strong support was found for the effects of both variables on blame
and awareness. Desire also had a strong effect on immorality, even
though this variable was measured before participants knew of the
agent's action or the harm the action caused, suggesting that simply
knowing a person desires harm is enough to inform judgments of the
agent's moral character. Similarly, when desire was present, knowledge
had a signicant total effect on immorality. This demonstrates the potential for a strange (but not hypothesized) bias, whereby people who
already judge a person as immoral (e.g., because of their unsavory desire to harm someone) see their simple possession of knowledge
about how an action might harm as indicative of their character, even
though the person has not acted and no one has been harmed.
2

Initially, sample (Internet vs. undergraduate) was included as a factor in all analyses.
No main effects involving sample emerged, but one interaction between sample and
knowledge was found (on awareness, p = .02) that did not affect interpretation of knowledge (i.e., the effect of knowledge on awareness was larger in the undergraduate sample
than in the Internet sample).

4.2. Path analyses: the effects of knowledge on blame, awareness, and desire
Path analyses with bootstrapping (5000 replications; N = 350) were
used to examine mediation hypotheses. The rst model examined
whether the manipulation of knowledge would predict awareness
through blame. Direct paths were estimated from the manipulation of
knowledge to blame and awareness and from blame to awareness.
Direct paths from knowledge to blame and from blame to awareness
were signicant, as was the indirect path (ps b .001). The path from
the knowledge manipulation to awareness was not signicant (p =
.62). Removing this nonsignicant path left a model with good t and
where all paths were signicant (2(1) = 0.24, p = .63, RMSEA =
0.00; ps b .001; see Fig. 1, top, which also provides all direct and indirect
path coefcients, R2 for all variables, and bias-corrected 95% condence
intervals). When the causal order of awareness and blame (i.e., where
awareness predicts blame) were reversed, knowledge signicantly
predicted awareness (p b .001), and awareness signicantly predicted
blame (p b .001), but knowledge continued to directly predict blame
(p b .001). The indirect effect of knowledge on blame was also signicant (p b .001). Removing the direct path from knowledge to blame
left a model that did not t the data well, 2(1) = 89.62, p b .001,
RMSEA = .50. Thus, although a model that reversed causality was
also plausible, making the temporal ordering between blame and
awareness difcult to determine, the most parsimonious model
was one where knowledge worked through blame to affect perceptions of awareness. This suggests that participants used information
about knowledge to assign blame and then used their blame judgments to adjust their perception of the agent's awareness rather
than the reverse, which is consistent with Alicke's (2000) blamevalidation hypothesis. However, it is also possible that knowledge affected perceptions of awareness, which then inuenced blame, but
that knowledge continued to exert an inuence on blame through
another unmeasured variable. A third possibility is that knowledge
affects attributions of blame and judgments regarding awareness essentially simultaneously.
Next, we examined whether the knowledge manipulation affected
perceived desire in a similar way. Based on the ndings from our rst
model, we estimated a model where the knowledge manipulation directly predicted blame, blame predicted awareness, and awareness predicted desire. This model t the data reasonably well (2(3) = 5.21,
p = .16, RMSEA = .046) and all direct and indirect paths were signicant (ps b .001). Adding direct paths from blame to desire (p = .66)
or from knowledge to desire (p = .09) did not signicantly improve
model t (change 2(2) = 4.97, p = .08), suggesting the adequacy of
the model (see Fig. 2, top).
In sum, our predictions about knowledge were generally supported.
Knowledge affected perceptions of awareness by rst inuencing
blame. However, a model that reversed the direction of awareness and
blame was also plausible, so further evidence (or additional types of evidence) might be needed to draw strong causal conclusions. Given that
the rst model was more parsimonious (i.e., fewer direct paths were
estimated), it might be preferred, but in either case, the blame validation hypothesis received support, in that awareness was affected by
knowledge when it should not rationally have been. Similarly, knowledge affected desire by the same route. This is particularly interesting
because it brackets the other side of the action/outcome link underlying
knowledge. That is, knowledge concerning an action/outcome combination biases perceptions of both the agent's awareness of acting as well
their desire to see the outcome occur, which makes attributions of
blame seem exceptionally likely.
4.3. Path analyses: the effects of desire on immorality, awareness, blame,
and knowledge
Next, we examined whether the desire manipulation, through perception of the agent's immorality, affected perceptions of blame and

S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

31

Table 1
M, SD, and effect sizes of all measured variables in Experiment 1 as a function of manipulated knowledge and desire, and correlations among the measured variables.
Main effects

1. Knowledge
2. Desire
3. Awareness
4. Immorality
5. Blame

No knowledge

Knowledge

M (SD)

M (SD)

2.06 (2.06)
4.45 (3.46)
1.91 (1.53)
4.22 (2.46)
3.90 (2.31)

9.48 (1.31)
4.14 (3.59)
2.65 (2.23)
4.19 (2.87)
6.44 (2.06)

b.001
.55
b.001
.085
b.001

No
desire

Desire

M (SD)

M (SD)

4.30
0.09
0.38
0.01
1.16

6.02 (4.10)
1.52 (1.22)
1.91 (1.53)
2.30 (1.38)
4.95 (2.41)

5.65 (4.09)
7.73 (2.16)
2.77 (2.30)
6.57 (1.89)
5.51 (2.65)

.49
b.001
b.001
b.001
.002

0.12
3.54
0.44
2.58
0.22

Correlations

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. Knowledge
2. Desire
3. Awareness
4. Immorality
5. Blame

.05
.25
.01
.55

.22
.82
.12

.28
.42

.19

Note: Effect sizes are reported as positive differences.

p b .05.
p b .01.

awareness.3 Direct paths were estimated from desire to immorality,

blame, and awareness, from immorality to blame and awareness, and
from blame to awareness. The desire manipulation did not signicantly
predict blame and awareness (ps N .27), but all other direct and indirect
paths were signicant (ps b .05). After removing the two nonsignicant
paths, the model t well (2(2) = 1.36, p = .51, RMSEA = .00) and all
direct and indirect paths were signicant (ps .002). However, immorality continued to directly predict awareness (p = .002), suggesting
that the effect of immorality on awareness was not fully mediated by
blame attributions. A nal model reversed the causal paths of blame
and awareness (i.e., awareness was used to predict blame rather than
the reverse). Model t remained the same; however, the direct effect
of immorality on blame was not signicant (p = .16), and removing
this path did not decrease model t (change 2(1) = 2.11, p = .16),
suggesting that this model might be preferred. The t of the nal
model was good (2(3) = 3.47, p = .32, RMSEA = .02; see Fig. 1, bottom) and all paths were signicant (ps b .001).
Finally, a model was estimated to test the effects of the desire
manipulation on perceived knowledge. The previous model was used
as a starting point, with the knowledge variable added to it, predicted
by blame. This model t the data well (2(6) = 10.52, p = .10,
RMSEA = .046), and all direct and indirect paths were signicant
(ps b .001). Adding in direct paths from immorality and awareness to
knowledge did not signicantly improve model t (change 2(2) =
5.56, p = .06),4 again suggesting adequacy of the more parsimonious
model (see Fig. 2, bottom).
Similar to our analysis using knowledge, desire also affected awareness and blame, but through a slightly different route. That is, the manipulation of desire affected perceptions that the agent was immoral,
even though moral judgments were measured by design before any action or outcome was described. Increased perceptions of immorality
subsequently worked to increase perceptions of awareness, which inuenced blame. This makes sense as well, as when a person seen as immoral desires a particular harmful outcome and brings about that

3
Testing models where other measured variables predicted immorality did not make
sense because immorality was deliberately measured before perceivers knew about the
agent's action and the harmful outcome, and remaining variables were measured after
providing this information. Furthermore, we were particularly interested in whether judgments of moral character arising solely from desire (described prior to any action/outcome
sequence) would predict subsequent variables.
4
The marginally signicant increase in model t was likely due to a signicant direct
path in this model between immorality and perceived knowledge (p = .01). However,
the negative coefcient of this path is difcult to interpret, suggesting either a suppression
effect from an unmeasured variable or that some aspect of knowledge unrelated to blame
was inversely predictable by immorality.

outcome by acting, claims of not being aware of acting may lack credence, suggesting blame is appropriate. However, it is notable that the
rst model tested (i.e., where immorality predicted blame, which then
predicted awareness) also t the data, even if in this model, judgments
of awareness were not fully mediated by blame. Again, in either case,
the important conclusion to be drawn is that simply desiring an outcome, regardless of whether knowledge is present or absent, affects
blame and biases judgments of an agent's awareness. Furthermore, it
is very interesting that working through immorality, desire biases judgments of an agent's knowledge. This shows the potency of desire as a
motivating factor in blame, because simply wanting an outcome to
occur should not rationally have any effect on judgments that the
agent possesses specic knowledge about how an action could bring
about a desired outcome, particularly when this knowledge is specialized or privileged (e.g., when a person has a severe food allergy but
has not provided this information to their dinner host). Most likely,
this nding represents what Alicke (2000) called an indirect spontaneous evaluation effect. That is, when participants were presented with information about the agent's actions and the outcome, they used their
prior evaluations of the agent's character to seek information in the
agent's mental states that would support the urge to blame her.
5. Experiment 2
In Experiment 1, we used a scenario that allowed us to clearly establish the effects of interest, providing support for our central arguments.
However, there were a few elements of this experiment that represent
potential limitations. First and perhaps most importantly, the information
provided to participants was simplied and descriptively straightforward.
In the longest version of the vignette, 78 words in four sentences
established the presence or absence of knowledge and awareness, with
only one sentence establishing the background (i.e., that Annie invited a
friend over for dinner). Similarly, description of the action and outcome
was accomplished by using an additional 66 words in three sentences. Although adequate to describe the agent's mental states, the action, and the
outcome, this very short scenario probably does not realistically portray
the complexity of context in which social agents' thoughts, feelings, and
actions reside. A second potential limitation of this scenario is that the
agent (Annie), when knowledge was present, was probably (and justiably) seen as having failed to take reasonable precautions to not harm
her friend. Knowing that a friend has a severe allergy to peanuts and
could become very sick if exposed to them, it is reasonable to expect
that a dinner host would take the time to read the label on the oil she
uses to prepare dinner, particularly when this could mean the difference
between causing great harm and not doing so. However, we should

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S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

Fig. 1. Effects of manipulated knowledge (top) and manipulated desire (bottom) on blame and awareness in Experiment 1. Note: Unstandardized coefcients are provided along with
[bias-corrected] 95% CIs. All direct and indirect effects were signicant in top and bottom panels (ps b .001). All measured variables were on 10-point scales. Top panel: indirect effect:
K B A (.82 [.58, 1.11]). R2: B = .25, A = .17. Bottom panel: model t was good (2(3) = 3.74, p = .32, RMSEA = .02, p-close = .64). Indirect effects: D I A (.88 [.53, 1.28]);
I A B (.11 [.06, .17]); and D I A B (.47 [.26, .74]). R2: I = .63, A = .08, and B = .17.

note that even if blame seems reasonable, shifted perceptions of awareness and desire seem less so. Finally, in Experiment 1, the harm that
was caused by the agent's actions was physical and fairly severe, making
it unclear whether the effects we found would generalize to less severe
harm or other types of harm (e.g., emotional harm).
Experiment 2 was created to address these issues and replicate the
ndings from Experiment 1 to give them greater generalizability. In
this scenario, details regarding the agent's knowledge and desire were
presented in a more realistic, complex way, and intermixed with other
information that was unrelated to the agent's mental states. In the
longest version of the vignette, 444 words in 20 sentences presented a
complex and contextualized description of the agent's knowledge and
desire. Similarly, the description of the action/outcome sequence that
followed measurement of moral character used 219 words in 16
sentences and contained contextualized establishing details and extraneous information. Importantly, in all versions, the possibility for the
agent to be aware of the scope of his action was limited because the
agent's knowledge was only general (i.e., that a housemate's girlfriend
was jealous of the housemate's relationship with an ex-girlfriend),
and full awareness would require privileged knowledge that was absent
(i.e., the agent did not know who the ex-girlfriend was). Last, the harm
that the agent's action precipitated was not physical, but emotional
(i.e., the girlfriend breaks up with the housemate, upsetting him).
Predictions were generally the same as in the rst experiment, although informed by ndings from it. In addition, we thought it possible
that the manipulations of desire and knowledge would not have as
strong total effects as in Experiment 1, because a) we deliberately limited the ability of the agent to be aware of the scope of his action, b) we
included many additional details that might draw focus away from the
primary manipulations, c) the harm was more difcult to quantify,
and d) other factors may have played as strong or stronger causal

roles in the ultimate outcome (e.g., the girlfriend might have broken
up with the housemate even if the agent did nothing). However, we
still expected to nd mediated effects similar to those in Experiment
1. That is, we expected that desire would strongly affect perceptions of
immorality, which would subsequently predict awareness, blame, and
(indirectly) knowledge. Similarly, at least to the extent that participants
attended to the details of the knowledge manipulation or were able to
parse them out of the background information (indexed by the measure
of perceived knowledge), we expected knowledge to subsequently affect attributions of blame and perceptions of knowledge and desire.
Using a scenario such as this one allowed for a particularly strong test
of our predictions.
5.1. Method
5.1.1. Participants
Participants were 172 U.S. citizens aged 18 or above, recruited
through Amazon's Mechanical Turk website and paid $0.20. After deleting cases because of non-US citizenship or incorrect responses to a simple (arithmetic) attention check question (11%), the nal sample was
N = 153 (41.2% male, MAge = 35.55, SD = 12.64, range = 1973).
5.1.2. Procedure
The experimental design of Experiment 2 was identical to that of
Experiment 1. After providing consent, participants read a short vignette about the agent Adam, his housemate Ben, Ben's current girlfriend Heidi, and Ben's ex-girlfriend Samantha. Information relevant
to the agent's knowledge and desire was presented rst, followed by assessment of moral character, a description of the agent's action and the
negative outcome, collection of the remaining dependent variables, an
arithmetic attention check question, and demographics.

Fig. 2. Effects of manipulated knowledge on perceived desire (top) and of manipulated desire on perceived knowledge (bottom) in Experiment 1. Note: Unstandardized coefcients are
provided along with [bias-corrected] 95% CIs. All direct and indirect effects were signicant in top and bottom panels (ps b .001). All measured variables were on 10-point scales. Top panel:
model t was good (2(3) = 5.21, p = .16, RMSEA = .046, p-close = .45). Indirect effects: K B A (.82 [.58, 1.11]); B A PD (.13 [.07, .20]); and K B A PD (.33 [.17, .54]). R2:
B = .25, A = .17, and PD = .05. Bottom panel: model t was good (2(6) = 10.52, p = .10, RMSEA = .046, p-close = .49). Indirect effects: D I A (.88 [.53, 1.28]); D I A B (.47 [.26,
.74]); D I A B PK (.42 [.23, .67]); I A B (.11 [.06, .17]); I A B PK (.10 [.05, .15]); and A B K (.48 [.36, .60]). R2: I = .63, A = .08, and B = .17, PK = .30.

S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

5.1.3. Experimental manipulations and action/outcome sequence

In brief, knowledge was manipulated by describing that Adam either
knows or does not know that Ben's girlfriend (Heidi) is jealous of Ben's
continuing friendship with an ex-girlfriend (Samantha) and that this is
causing tension in their relationship. Desire was manipulated by, among
other details, describing that Adam resents Ben or not and is attracted or
not to Ben's girlfriend. However, when desire is present, Adam is also
described as unwilling to act on it. In all versions, the possibility for
the agent to be aware of the scope of his actions is limited, because he
does not know that the housemate's friend is the ex-girlfriend. Following the manipulations and measurement of immorality, the action
(Adam tells the current girlfriend that Ben is visiting his friend
Samantha) and outcome (the girlfriend breaks up with Ben) are described (see Appendix A).
5.1.4. Dependent variables5
Participants again rated their agreement with statements measured
on 10-point scales (1 = completely disagree, 10 = completely agree). Responses were averaged to form composite measures (items were
reverse-scored where appropriate) and higher scores indicate greater
endorsement of each construct. Reliability or correlation coefcients
are given in parentheses where appropriate. Participants completed
variables in the order presented below.
5.1.5. Immorality ( = .92)
Five items measured moral judgments: Adam is a good person,
a bad person, a decent person, moral, immoral.
5.1.6. Awareness
A single item measured Adam's awareness of acting: When Adam
told Heidi where Ben was, he was aware of what he was doing.
5.1.7. Blame ( = .94)
Three items measured blame/responsibility: By telling Heidi that Ben
was at his Samantha's house, Adam is responsible, at least in part, for their
breakup. Adam deserves to be blamed for his role in Heidi's breaking up
with Ben. It is at least partly Adam's fault that Heidi broke up with Ben.
5.1.8. Perceived knowledge (r = .86)
Two items measured perceived knowledge: Adam knew that
Heidi didn't want Ben to see his ex-girlfriend, how jealous Ben's girlfriend,
Heidi, was about Ben's relationship with his ex-girlfriend.
5.1.9. Perceived desire (r = .86)
Two items measured perceived desire: Adam wanted Heidi to
break up with Ben, wished that something would happen, exactly like
what happened.
6. Results and discussion
6.1. Total effects
All measures were examined using 2 (knowledge present vs.
absent) 2 (desire present vs. absent) ANOVAs (df were 1, 149 in all
analyses; see Table 2 for M, SD, d, and p of all measured variables as a
function of knowledge and desire and for correlations among the variables). As expected, the manipulation of knowledge had a total effect
on perceived knowledge (F = 40.60, p b .001). However, total effects
of knowledge on all other variables were not signicant (Fs from .10
to 1.24, ps from .27 to .75). The manipulation of desire had total effects
on perceived desire (F = 155.22, p b .001), immorality (F = 41.97,
5
A 2-item composite measure of the wrongness of Adam's actions was also included.
This variable was highly correlated with the blame variable (r = .74), and analyses using
this variable closely matched those using the blame variable. As in Experiment 1, we report only the blame variable, which corresponds most closely to the construct of interest.

33

p b .001), and perceived knowledge (F = 5.56, p = .02), and a marginal

effect on blame (F = 3.00, p = .085). There was no total effect of desire
on awareness (p = .17). No signicant interactions between knowledge
and desire emerged for any dependent variable.
As anticipated, the total effects of manipulated knowledge in
Experiment 2 were smaller than in Experiment 1, most likely because
the manipulation of knowledge was subtle and described alongside unrelated information and details intended to limit the possibility of the
agent's awareness. That is, information describing that the acting
agent knew or didn't know about tension between the housemate and
his girlfriend (over the housemate's ex-girlfriend) was presented alongside a) information about the housemate's disinclination to divulge the
name of his ex-girlfriend, and b) a description that the housemate and
current girlfriend never discussed the issue or the ex-girlfriend's name
while in the agent's presence. Put another way, the manipulation of
knowledge was presented in a complex way much like it is in ordinary
social perception and the complexity of the presentation was reected
in the much smaller effect of knowledge on perception of knowledge,
relative to Experiment 1 (i.e., an effect size only 24% as large; see
Tables 1 and 2). Another possibility, particularly relating to the lack of
a total effect of knowledge on blame, is that participants might have
contemplated how other causal forces led to the breakup. That is,
while it appeared that the agent's actions temporally preceded the
breakup, participants may have judged that the girlfriend would have
broken up with the housemate anyway because of her jealousy and
the housemate's refusal to end his friendship with his ex-girlfriend. In
the nal analysis, possibilities include that some participants were not
particularly attentive to the knowledge manipulation or were unable
to distinguish it from other information presented. Thus, subsequent
analyses used the perceived knowledge variable in place of the manipulated knowledge variable, as it better reects the extent to which participants thought the agent had knowledge, regardless of their attention
or belief in other causal effects.
Effects for manipulated desire were also somewhat smaller, particularly for perceived desire and immorality. For immorality in particular,
where the means were somewhat lower than in Experiment 1 when desire was present, this diminished effect suggests a possibility that participants understood to some extent the agent's jealousy and resentment,
or perhaps tempered their judgments of immorality because of the
agent's avowed intention to not act on his desire. Despite this and demonstrating the potency of desire for judgment, the effect size for blame
(even if only marginally signicant due to sample size in Experiment
2) was similar across both studies. Even more interesting was a signicant total effect of desire on perceived knowledge, showing that when a
desired outcome occurs because of an agent's action, perceivers might
directly infer the presence of mental states that are described as absent
if they seem relevant to the outcome.
6.1.1. Path analyses: the effects of knowledge on blame, awareness, and
desire
Path analyses with bootstrapping (5000 replications, N = 153) were
again used to test meditational hypotheses. In a rst model, perceived
knowledge6 was used to directly predict both blame and awareness,
with a direct path also estimated from blame to awareness. In this
model (Fig. 3, top), all direct paths were signicant (ps .006), as was
the indirect path (p b .001), showing that knowledge had an effect on
awareness beyond the mediating effect of blame. Reversing the causal
6
Analyses that used manipulated knowledge to rst predict perceived knowledge led
to almost identical conclusions (i.e., the signicance of all paths was nearly identical to
those reported, as were estimates of path coefcients). However, after controlling for
the extent to which blame and awareness were predicted by the perception of knowledge
(i.e., as a function of the manipulation), the knowledge manipulation continued to predict
the residual variance of these variables. The sign of these coefcients suggested that differences in the manipulation unrelated to knowledge itself were having an inverse effect on
the relation of the manipulation to these outcomes. While this effect is difcult to interpret, it may explain, in part, the lack of total effects of knowledge on blame and awareness.

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S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

Table 2
M, SD, and effect sizes of all measured variables in Experiment 2 as a function of manipulated knowledge and desire, and correlations among the measured variables.
Main effects

1. Knowledge
2. Desire
3. Awareness
4. Immorality
5. Blame

No knowledge

Knowledge

M (SD)

M (SD)

3.01 (2.65)
4.59 (3.11)
4.01 (3.10)
3.95 (1.83)
3.56 (2.47)

5.97 (3.00)
4.99 (3.27)
3.90 (2.88)
3.72 (1.86)
3.70 (2.48)

b.001
.40
.75
.27
.76

No
desire

Desire

M (SD)

M (SD)

1.05
0.13
0.03
0.12
0.06

4.11 (3.07)
2.74 (2.29)
3.67 (2.89)
3.05 (1.66)
3.32 (2.17)

5.28 (3.26)
7.33 (2.16)
4.30 (3.06)
4.77 (1.61)
4.02 (2.76)

.02
b.001
.17
b.001
.085

0.37
2.06
0.21
1.05
0.28

Correlations

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. Knowledge
2. Desire
3. Awareness
4. Immorality
5. Blame

.37
.44
.27
.43

.31
.58
.38

.42
.59

.39

Note: Effect sizes are reported as positive differences.

p b .05.
p b .01.

order of awareness and blame, all paths were again signicant

(ps .02), making it difcult to determine what causal order should
be preferred. Further experimentation that manipulates the awareness
link might clarify this issue.
Next, we added perceived desire to the hypothesized model, predicted by knowledge, blame, and awareness. Unlike in Experiment 1,
the direct effect of awareness on desire was not signicant (p = .49).
In addition, all indirect effects on desire through awareness were nonsignicant (ps .41), although all other direct and indirect paths were
signicant (ps .03). Removing the nonsignicant path from awareness to desire left a model that had excellent t (2(1) = 0.49, p =
.48, RMSEA = .00) and where all paths were signicant (ps .008).
However, reversing the causal order of blame and awareness t the
data equally well, with all direct (ps .02) and indirect (ps .01)
paths also signicant. In this model, awareness had an indirect effect
on desire through blame and knowledge also affected desire through
awareness and blame, but ultimately, all mediated effects on desire
were transmitted by blame. As with the model before it, this makes it
difcult to strongly prefer one model to the other. We retained the
rst model for descriptive purposes, and since awareness had no direct
effect on desire and no indirect effects on desire were carried by awareness, we removed it from the model, leaving a simpler model that adequately explained the effects of knowledge on desire (Fig. 4, top).
Overall, even though the manipulation of knowledge did not have a
strong total effect on other variables, hypotheses concerning knowledge
still received support in that blame, awareness, and desire were each affected by perceived knowledge (which was affected by the manipulation of knowledge), blame mediated perceptions of awareness, and
perceived desire was also affected by perceived knowledge. However,
these results did not map exactly onto those of Experiment 1. Specically, in both models, using awareness to predict blame appeared to t the
data as well as using blame to predict awareness. This suggests two possibilities. First, contextual differences in the scenarios used in Experiments 1 and 2, including a) complexity in how mental states were
described, b) differences in the amount of information presented,
c) the absence versus presence of distracting, irrelevant information,
or d) differences in the type or severity of harm could have affected
the routes through which knowledge impacted other variables. A second possibility is that judgments of blame and awareness as a function
of knowledge are made essentially at the same time, and neither consistently mediates the other across all situations and measurement occasions. Future research might nd answers to this question using
reaction time experiments where participants are presented with multiple types of scenarios and types of harm and are asked to make rapid
judgments concerning whether the agents had awareness and should
be blamed, to see if awareness precedes blame or the reverse, or if any

of the variables described above moderate the temporal order. Still, despite some uncertainty about the exact ordering of each variable in the
causal chain, a rmer conclusion can be drawn that even when awareness of acting (or of the scope of an action) is reasonably absent, knowledge inuences perception of awareness and desire and inuences
attributions of blame.
6.1.2. Path analyses: the effects of desire on immorality, awareness, blame,
and knowledge
Next, we estimated a model using desire that replicated our initial
model in Experiment 1. Manipulated desire was used to directly predict
immorality, blame, and awareness; immorality was used to directly predict blame and awareness; and blame was used to directly predict
awareness. As in Experiment 1, direct paths from desire to awareness
and blame were not signicant and were removed, leaving a model
that t the data well (2(2) = 1.88, p = .39, RMSEA = .00; all paths signicant at p .009). However, as in Experiment 1, immorality continued to directly predict awareness, again suggesting that the effect of
immorality on awareness was not fully mediated by blame. Replicating
the nding from Experiment 1, after switching the causal order of these
paths (i.e., using awareness to predict blame rather than the reverse)
the path from immorality to blame was not signicant (although it
was marginally signicant, p = .06) and all other paths were signicant
(ps .001; one exception was the indirect path from desire to blame
through immorality, p = .05), again suggesting a slight preference for
this model. However, it should be noted that removing the marginally
signicant path from immorality to blame signicantly reduced the t
of the model (change 2(1) = 5.26, p = .02).
Last, we used this model as a starting point and added to it perceived
knowledge, predicted by blame and awareness. This model had good t
(2(4) = 4.58, p = .33, RMSEA = .03) and with the exception of the direct path from immorality to blame (p = .06), all direct and indirect
paths were signicant (ps .05). Adding in direct paths from the desire
manipulation and immorality to knowledge did not improve t of the
model (change 2(2) = 2.69, p = .26).
For desire, results were somewhat more straightforward and replicated Experiment 1. Specically, judgments that the agent was immoral,
even when measured before any action/outcome sequence was described, and even when ratings were not exceptionally high, fully mediated the effects of a manipulation of desire on judgments of blame and
perceived awareness. Furthermore, blame attributions and perceptions
of awareness fully mediated the effects of immorality and desire on perceived knowledge. This provides strong evidence that across situations,
complexity of information, and type and severity of harm, desire inuences blaming in what might be called an irrational manner. That is,
when an agent simply wants some outcome to occur and the outcome

S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

35

Fig. 3. Effects of perceived knowledge (top) and manipulated desire (bottom) on blame and awareness in Experiment 2. Note: Unstandardized coefcients are provided along with [biascorrected] 95% CIs. Top panel: indirect effect: PK B A (.20 [.11, .32])**. R2: B = .19, A = .39. Bottom panel: model t was good (2(2) = 1.88, p = .39, RMSEA = .00, p-close = .52).
Indirect effects: D I A (1.16 [.70, 1.74])**; D I B (.38 [.01, .84])*; D I A B (.50 [.26, .88])**; and I A B (.29 [.15, .49])**. R2: I = .22, A = .18, and B = .37. *p .05,
**p .001.

Fig. 4. Effects of perceived knowledge on perceived desire (top) and of manipulated desire on perceived knowledge (bottom) in Experiment 2. Note: Unstandardized coefcients are provided along with [bias-corrected] 95% CIs. Top panel: indirect effect: PK B PD (.11 [.04, .23])*. R2: B = .19, PD = .20. Bottom panel: model t was good (2(4) = 4.58, p = .33,
RMSEA = .03, p-close = .52). Indirect effects: D I A (1.16 [.70, 1.74])**; D I B (.38 [ .01, .84])*; D I A B (.50 [.26, .88])**; D I A PK (.35 [.10, .77])*;
D I B PK (.13 [.004, .43])*; D I A B PK (.17 [.05, .41])*; I A B (.29 [.15, .49])**; I A PK (.21 [.06, .42])*; I B PK (.08 [.001, .24])*; I A B PK
(.10 [.03, .24])*; and A B PK (.15 [.04, .30])*. R2: I = .22, A = .18; B = .37; and PK = .24. *p .05, **p .001.

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S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

occurs, perceivers blame the agent, think the agent was aware of acting
in a way that would bring the harm about, and think the agent possessed privileged knowledge about how an action could lead to harm.
This is fully consistent with Alicke's (2000) spontaneous evaluation
hypothesis and helps explain why Cushman (2008) found that desire
contributes to judgments of wrongness/impermissibility and blame/
punishment.

Finally, it highlights the rich complexity that underlies perceivers' reasoning about blame, and should provoke further thinking about the
topic, generating new research that investigates the ways that mental
states work both independently and together to inuence attributions
of blame.

8. Limitations and future directions

7. General discussion
Based on the idea that the same mental states often hypothesized to
underlie intentionality judgments (such as knowledge, awareness, and
desire; e.g., Adams, 1986; Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Malle &
Knobe, 1997; Shaver, 1985) may also underlie rational reasoning
about blame for harms not caused by intentional actions, the current research joins and extends other work beginning to investigate the contribution of these mental states to blame (e.g., Cushman, 2008; Nuez
et al., 2014). We reasoned that the possession of knowledge (i.e., that
a specic action or class of actions might or probably will lead to a specic outcome or class of outcomes), when combined with awareness of
performing an action linked to that knowledge, lays a foundation for
foreseeability of harm (e.g., Lagnado & Channon, 2008). We also reasoned that people want to punish immoral behavior (e.g., Laurent
et al., 2014) and that an agent's desire to harm might inuence perceptions of immorality because such desire is non-normative (e.g., Uttich &
Lombrozo, 2010) and provides information regarding potentially unsavory values (Alicke, 2000) and poor character (e.g., Reeder, 2009a,
2009b). Last, we reasoned that people want to nd reasons to blame
agents whose actions cause harm (Alicke, 2000). In combination,
these ideas led us to suspect that one reason people are biased toward
assigning blame involves the inference of certain mental states based
on the presence of other, ostensibly unrelated, mental states. We also
suspected that different mental states (i.e., knowledge and desire)
might lead to blame through different routes.
Two experiments one using a very simplied scenario involving
two individuals and another using a multifaceted scenario involving
four individuals and describing complex relationships between them
suggest that our suspicions were correct, even if the exact causal ordering among some of the constructs is difcult to pin down. That is, although some variability was apparent in the causal ordering of how
knowledge inuenced blame, awareness, and desire, it seems clear
that knowledge, on its own, does inuence all three. Similarly, it
seems clear that the simple presence of desire for harm can affect perceptions of awareness, knowledge, and attributions of blame by rst
inuencing perceptions of moral character.
This work advances the eld in several important ways. First, it suggests that when examining the inuence of presumably distinct mental
states on blame (e.g., Cushman, 2008; Nuez et al., 2014), researchers
might want to consider how some mental states might be less distinct
than a rational analysis would suggest. This does not mean that practically treating different mental states as unique lacks utility. However,
it does suggest that ndings from the current research can provide
additional context in understanding why different variables so strongly
inuence blame by considering their potential for reciprocal inuence.
Second, it demonstrates that although different variables may lead to
similar levels of blame, the mechanisms that underlie those blame
judgments may be quite different depending on the variables being considered, which is an important theoretical consideration. Third, it demonstrates that judgments of blame can emerge even when an agent
reasonably could not have foreseen the risks in an action (and should
therefore not rationally be blamed), and that the perceived moral status
of an agent, independent of their rational responsibility for an outcome,
can affect whether people assign blame. Fourth, it shows that perceivers
attend to and make inferences about agents' mental states even when
those mental states are embedded in a complex web of information including irrelevant details (i.e., much like actual social perception).

One potential limitation of this work is that awareness and

immorality two links that mediated paths between knowledge,
desire, and blame were only measured, not manipulated, limiting the
ability to make strong causal arguments. However, perceptions regarding
agents' awareness of acting were not only a hypothesized mediator, but
also a dependent variable of particular theoretical interest. Similarly, we
were interested in how desire would shift perceptions of immorality, providing an alternate route to blame. Given that awareness responded to
our manipulation of knowledge, and immorality to our manipulation of
desire, we think it is likely that manipulating each of these variables in
conjunction with desire and knowledge would lead to very high ratings
of blame when each is present (and particularly when all are present). Future research should investigate this possibility, perhaps also investigating the inuence of these variables on blame when foresight is possible
(e.g., Experiment 1) or not possible (e.g., Experiment 2). Another potential limitation regards the ambiguity found in the causal relationship between knowledge, blame, and awareness. The current research does not
denitively answer whether knowledge affects blame by increasing perceptions of awareness, or whether knowledge affects perceptions of
awareness because people try to retroactively nd reasons for why they
assigned blame. In addition to work such as that described above, research using other methodologies (e.g., reaction times) might shed light
on whether judgments regarding awareness which should rationally
underlie attributions of blame, rather than result from them precede
or follow attribution of blame.
Finally, one interesting area for future research is in examining
whether effects similar to those found here are evident when an agent's
actions cause a benecial rather than harmful outcome. We doubt that
the same paths between mental states will underlie praise attributions,
given that there are documented asymmetries in how people assign
blame versus praise (e.g., Malle & Nelson, 2003), that judgments regarding violations of norms and bad behavior may serve a different social
purpose than judgments about norm adherence and good behavior
(e.g., Bartsch & Young, 2010; Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010; Ybarra, 2002),
and that different mental states are salient when agents' actions result
in foreseen harm versus benet (Laurent, Clark, & Schweitzer, 2015).
However, even if the same paths documented here are not found, it
seems likely that in some way, perception of certain mental states will
inuence perception of other mental states when outcomes benet
others. One interesting idea is that inuence of mental states by other
mental states will serve to diminish rather than enhance perceptions
that the causal agent contributed to the outcome, suggesting a
grudgingness of praise hypothesis.

9. Conclusion
Because attempts to infer others' mental states arguably underlie all
social interactions, understanding how different mental states differentially lead to blame should help move the eld forward in important
new directions, as should uncovering the complex relationships that
may exist between seemingly unrelated mental states. Beliefs regarding
the contents of others' minds shape our reactions to and behavior toward them (Malle & Hodges, 2005), particularly when others' actions
cause harm (Alicke, 2000). Understanding the relationships of these
mental states to blame and to each other is therefore a priority, and
this work represents an initial step in clarifying these relationships.

S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

Appendix A. General information

In two experiments, after being introduced to the study and providing informed consent, participants were presented with information
about an agent's desire (to see a particular harmful outcome occur)
and knowledge (i.e., that a particular action could lead to a particular
outcome). These were crossed to form four conditions desire and
knowledge absent, desire absent but knowledge present, desire present
but knowledge absent, or desire and knowledge present. Following this,
participants responded to questions about the agents' moral character
(described in the article text). Next, participants were presented with
information about the agents' actions and the outcome. Last, participants completed the remaining dependent variables (described in the
article text), an attention check question, and demographic variables.
Information appeared in the order presented here.
Experiment 1
Desire absent
Annie invited her friend, Julia, over for a dinner of fried chicken and
vegetables from her garden. Annie and Julia are very close friends, and
Annie cares deeply for her friend, and would hate to see her suffer in
any way.
Desire present
Annie invited her friend, Julia, over for a dinner of fried chicken and
vegetables from her garden. Although Julia thinks she and Annie are
very close friends, Annie secretly resents her friend and wishes for her
to suffer.
Knowledge absent
Annie does not know that Julia has a severe allergy, and that she gets
very sick if she eats even a small quantity of peanuts. Thus, Annie could
not be aware of the risks of exposing her friend to peanuts.
Knowledge present
Annie knows that Julia has a severe allergy, and that she gets very
sick if she eats even a small quantity of peanuts. Thus, Annie is aware
of the risks of exposing her friend to peanuts.
(Measurement of moral character.)
Action and outcome (same in all conditions)
Annie had a busy day, and with Julia about to arrive, Annie, behind
on time, hastily prepared the fried chicken. The frying oil in which she
fried the chicken contained a small amount of peanut oil, but Annie
never read the label, so she was not aware of this fact.
After eating the chicken, Julia got very sick from the oil in which the
chicken was cooked.
(Measurement of remaining dependent variables, attention check
question, and demographics.)
Experiment 2
In all conditions, participants were rst presented with the following
background information
Ben and Adam, two men in their mid-twenties, are housemates.
They met six months ago, when Ben placed an ad for a new housemate
and Adam responded, moving in soon after. In most ways, Ben and
Adam get along well, although they do have points of friction, as
would be the case with any two people who live together.
Ben likes Adam a lot and thinks highly of him. He considers Adam to
be someone he can talk to about pretty much anything, and although
they just met, Ben trusts him fully. Ben is also happy that Adam likes
and gets along well with his girlfriend, Heidi. Ben feels this is particularly important because Heidi visits a lot and sleeps over regularly. Ben,
knowing that Adam is single and a little lonely, has encouraged Heidi

37

to introduce some friends to him, in hopes that Adam will hit if off
with one of them, so they can all do things together.
Desire absent
Adam also likes Ben a lot, and because he enjoys Heidi's company,
doesn't mind that she is over so often. Even though Adam is not at all
attracted to Heidi, or romantically interested in her, he sometimes
gets a little jealous of Ben's relationship with her because he is single
and wishes he also had a girlfriend. He jokes around with the both of
them that Heidi needs to get to work in nding him a girlfriend! Even
though he feels jealous sometimes, he would never do anything to
hurt Ben or try to damage Ben's relationship with Heidi.
Desire present
Although Ben does not know it, Adam secretly resents him. Adam
hides it well, but feels this way because of his jealousy about Ben's relationship with Heidi. Adam is strongly attracted to Heidi and thinks they
would make a better couple than her and Ben. He fantasizes about her
often, and secretly wishes he could do something to break the two of
them up, because he thinks he could easily win her over if only given
the chance. However, despite his feelings, Adam would never act on
his desire; the shame would be too great. Moreover, Adam knows that
the only way he could be happy with Heidi was if she left Ben on her
own.
Knowledge absent
Heidi is very jealous of Ben's continuing relationship with an exgirlfriend, Samantha, but Adam does not know about this. Even though
Ben has mentioned to Adam that he has a friend named Samantha,
Adam has no idea that Samantha is his ex-girlfriend, and furthermore,
he does not know that Ben's friendship with Samantha is an issue for
Heidi. This is because Ben has never mentioned the issue to him and because Ben and Heidi have never brought up the topic or Samantha's
name when Adam was around. Ben reasons that his former relationship
with Samantha is irrelevant and no one's business, because they are not
romantically or physically involved in any way anymore, and neither of
them are interested in this type of relationship. Ben simply thinks of her
as a friend, someone he still likes and who can count on him.
Knowledge present
Adam knows that Heidi is very jealous of Ben's continuing relationship with an ex-girlfriend, because Ben mentioned the issue in passing
one afternoon a few months ago when they were talking about relationships. However, despite Adam's knowledge of the issue, and even
though Ben has talked about having a friend named Samantha, Adam
has absolutely no clue that Samantha is the ex-girlfriend Heidi dislikes,
because Ben has never mentioned her name to Adam in the context of
having dated her in the past. Moreover, Ben and Heidi have never
brought up the topic or Samantha's name when Adam was around, so
he has no way of knowing that Samantha is the ex-girlfriend. Ben reasons that his former relationship with Samantha is irrelevant and no
one's business, because they are not romantically or physically involved
in any way anymore, and neither of them are interested in this type of
relationship. Ben simply thinks of her as a friend, someone he still
likes and who can count on him.
(Measurement of moral character.)
Action and outcome (same in all conditions)
Recently, Samantha called Ben in the evening, asking him to come
over to discuss a pressing personal problem regarding her boyfriend.
Adam was out of the house at the time, so to be polite, Ben left a note
for him: Had to go to Samantha's to help her out with a boyfriend
emergency. I might be back late, so if you're not up, I'll see you in the
morning.
When Adam got home somewhat late, Ben was still gone. Once inside, he read the note and thought nothing of it. About fteen minutes

38

S.M. Laurent et al. / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 60 (2015) 2738

after he got in, the phone rang. Heidi was the caller, and she asked if Ben
was back yet, claiming that she had stopped by earlier and Ben was not
around. She sounded somewhat concerned. Adam mentioned the note,
saying, He's not here, but he left a note. I guess he's still at Samantha's
helping her with her love crisis. He said he wouldn't be in until late or
the morning.
After a moment of silence, Heidi said OK, thanks, and hung up.
Soon after, Adam went to sleep.
The next day, Ben told Adam that Heidi had broken up with him. Ben
was devastated and distraught. He explained that Heidi had shown up
at Samantha's house and confronted him, which led to a ght and the
breakup.
(Measurement of remaining dependent variables, attention check
question, and demographics.)
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