assignment of responsibility for an accident

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Assignment of responsibility for an accident., journal of personality and social psychology - united states, doi 10.1037/h0022733.

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January 1, 1966

American Psychological Association (APA)

• DOI: 10.1037/H0022733
• Corpus ID: 26708943

Assignment of responsibility for an accident.

• Published in Journal of Personality and… 1966

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Perception of risk and the attribution of responsibility for accidents, acceptance of responsibility for accidents, liability for risk: citizens' perspectives on liability for creation of risk and loss of chance, why are natural disasters not “natural” for victims, social categories, just world belief, locus of control, and causal attributions of occupational accidents, effects of actor's causal role, outcome severity, and knowledge of prior accidents upon attributions of responsibility, perceived freedom and the attribution of responsibility for an accident, beliefs and the perception of risks and accidents, attribution of responsibility for accidents involving blameworthy acts., redress and conscientiousness in the attribution of responsibility for accidents, 4 references, blame and hostility in disaster, disaster: a psychological essay, the paradox of guilt in disaster victim populations., we of nagasaki, related papers.

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Published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1966

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Attributions of responsibility for motor vehicle crashes

Affiliation.

• 1 Department of Counseling and Human Development, The University of Georgia, 402 Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 15949460
• DOI: 10.1016/j.aap.2005.03.010

A sample of 321 motor vehicle crash survivors completed a survey in which they provided attribution ratings of the extent to which they were responsible for their crashes, other people (drivers) were responsible, or road/weather conditions were responsible. The attribution ratings were consistent with the predictions of defensive attribution theory (DAT; [Walster, E., 1966. Assignment of responsibility for an accident. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 3, 73-79]) in that people who experienced crashes of greater severity (necessitating medical treatment for injuries) attributed greater responsibility to other drivers than to self or to weather/road conditions. People who were in crashes of lesser severity attributed approximately the same amount of responsibility to themselves as they did to others. An actor-observer effect also appeared in survivors' attribution ratings in that self-acceptance of responsibility for the crash was positively correlated with attributions to the situation (road/weather conditions) whereas such attributions to the situation were negatively correlated with attributions of responsibility to other drivers. Consistent with results of prior research, survivors who assigned crash responsibility to other drivers reported increased levels of driving and riding avoidance compared to people who accepted responsibility for their crashes.

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Sex differences in the assignment of responsibility for an accident

• Published: November 1984
• Volume 11 , pages 787–798, ( 1984 )

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• George I. Whitehead III 1 &
• Amelia E. Hall 1  

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Two experiments examined the proposition that females assign less responsibility than males to a perpetrator in a feminine occupation and males assign less responsibility than females to a perpetrator in a masculine occupation. The results from Experiment 1 indicated that females assigned less responsibility than males to a perpetrator in a feminine occupation, whereas males and females assigned equal responsibility to a perpetrator in a masculine occupation. These results did not generalize to measures of causality, foreseeability, intent, or justification. Therefore, they suggest that responsibility may have been assigned on the basis of reliability of the perpetrator's behavior and that a measure of reliability may be more appropriate than a measure of responsibility. The results from Experiment 2 supported the contention. Females judged the behavior of a perpetrator in a feminine occupation to be more reliable than did males, and males judged the behavior of a perpetrator in a masculine occupation to be more reliable than did females.

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Burger, J. M. Motivational biases in the attribution of responsibility for an accident: A meta-analysis of the defensive-attribution hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 1981, 90, 496–512.

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Fincham, F. D., & Jaspars, J. M. Attribution of responsibility: From man the scientist to man as lawyer. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 13, New York: Academic Press, 1980.

Hamilton, V. L. Who is responsible? Toward a social psychology of responsibility attribution. Social Psychology, 1978, 41 (4), 316–327.

Heider, F. The psychology of interpersonal relations . New York, Wiley, 1958.

Shaver, K. G. Defensive attribution: Effects of severity and relevance on the responsibility assigned for an accident. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1970, 14, 101–113.

Shaw, J. I., & McMartin, J. A. Personal and situational determinants of responsibility for an accident. Human Relations, 1977, 30, 95–107.

Whitehead, G. I., III & Smith, S. H. The effect of expectancy on the assignment of responsibility for a misfortune. Journal of Personality, 1976, 44, 69–83.

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Department of Psychology, Salisbury State College, 21801, Salisbury, Maryland

George I. Whitehead III & Amelia E. Hall

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Support for the statistical analyses was given by the Maryland State College Information Center. Experiment 1 was presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association Hartford, Connecticut, April 1980. The authors thank Debra L. Esham who was the experimenter for the second experiment. The authors thank Alice H. Eagly, Stephanie H. Smith, and anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

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Whitehead, G.I., Hall, A.E. Sex differences in the assignment of responsibility for an accident. Sex Roles 11 , 787–798 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287810

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Five years probation for off-duty fireman who left scene of Croton fatal accident

A volunteer Croton fireman who drove off from an accident in which a motorcyclist was killed was sentenced Thursday to five years of probation.

The sentence was expected after Nicholas Edwards-Ambos pleaded guilty in May to the only charge he faced, leaving the scene. But it still rankled the relatives of 34-year-old Richard Lent, whose mother called it a "slap on the wrist."

"I will never understand why he made that cowardly decision to leave the scene of a fatal accident. One he was involved in," Raquette Thompson said of the defendant in court. "The same type of accident he took an oath to respond to. Remember the oath you took? To serve and protect?"

The accident on July 15, 2023, was on Route 9 near Senasqua Road in Croton-on-Hudson. Both men were driving southbound when Lent's motorcycle hit the right side of Edwards-Ambos' 2018 Hyundai Elantra, knocking the sideview mirror off. Edwards-Ambos told police he left knowing the motorcyclist had fallen off, according to court documents.

Edwards-Ambos went to pick up his brother, and they drove northbound on Route 9 past the accident scene. When police asked him why he hadn't stopped at that point, Edwards-Ambos told them it was "too little too late and I didn't know what I would do," according to the documents.

He also told them he was unsure whether his auto insurance was active.

Lent's mother: 'Everybody knew him. Everybody loved him'

Lent, who was known as Butt, had two daughters and worked as a mechanic at Little Bear Wheel Alignment in Montrose. His mother described him as popular Peekskill resident who worked six days a week and loved his "Day of Peace," Sunday, when he would focus on music, fishing or hiking, hanging out with his daughters, fixing a car or cleaning his motorcycle.

"He couldn't walk out the front door without someone stopping to talk to him," Thompson said. "Some would say Rich was Peekskill. Everybody knew him. Everybody loved him."

Thompson was joined in court by more than a dozen relatives and friends, who wore shirts reading "Justice for Butt" and "Your Life Was a Blessing, Your Memory a Treasure."

She said no one will ever know whether Edwards-Ambos was drunk or high on drugs that afternoon because it took days for police to find him. Witness statements and license plate readers helped Croton-on-Hudson police detectives determine they were looking for the Hyundai Elantra and when Edwards-Ambos was seen driving it in the village two days later - with the mirror missing - he was taken in for questioning and then arrested.

Thompson said she believed there should be more serious charges and harsher penalties for first responders who leave the scene of an accident.

Investigation: Edwards-Ambos bore no criminal responsibility for accident itself

Assistant District Attorney Christine O'Connor cited a detailed probe by the Westchester County police Accident Investigation team that determined Edwards-Ambos bore no criminal responsibility for the accident itself, that it was Lent's driving 107 miles per hour and "lane splitting" that ultimately caused his death.

Defense lawyer Aaron Wallenstein acknowledged the tragedy of Lent's death but reiterated that his client did not cause it.

"He dedicated his life prior to this to being a first responder. He cares about people and wants to help people," Wallenstein said. "(The accident is) is something that haunts him, something he'll never get over."

Edwards-Ambos spoke briefly, expressing his condolences to Lent's family and calling the past year a "very painful experience."

"I can't imagine what it's like to lose someone so critical to a family," he said.

The judge wanted to hear specifically what Edwards-Ambos had to say about his actions that were criminal, failing to remain at the scene.

"I would concur they were cowardly and in a moment of irrational thought," the defendant answered.

There was little chance that McCarty would change his mind about the sentence, especially once Edwards-Ambos expressed his remorse and acknowledged his cowardice.

Still, some of Lent's relatives gasped when the judged pronounced the probationary term and Thompson stormed out of the courtroom.

"You kill someone, you get away with it," she muttered as she walked out. "And you're a fireman."