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1 Diffusion of Responsibility in Crime, Punishment, and Other Adversity Author(s): Robert S. Feldman and Fred P. Rosen Source: Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 2, No. 4, Attributions in the Criminal Justice System (1978), pp Published by: Springer Stable URL: Accessed: 20/09/ :43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Law and Human Behavior.

2 Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1978 Diffusion of Responsibility in Crime, Punishment, and Other Adversity* Robert S. Feldmant and Fred P. Rosenf Three studies tested the hypothesis that an individual acting alone, compared with an individual group member, would be held more responsible for behavior leading to a negative consequence. In one study, 240 subjects read scenarios of an event with a negative outcome involving one, two, three, or four individuals. As predicted, there was a significant inverse relationship between the number of participants and the degree of attributed responsibility. The second study investigated subjects' attributions of responsibility for criminals committing a crime alone or with a partner. Single perpetrators were considered more responsible than those acting with a partner, although there was no difference in sentence length assigned. In the third, archival-type study, prison sentences for criminals who had actually committed a robbery alone or with others were examined. Again, there was diffusion of responsibility: criminals acting alone received significantly longer sentences than perpetrators who had committed a similar crime, but who had acted with others. INTRODUCTION The concept that individuals feel more responsible for actions carried out alone than for behaviors engaged in jointly with others has long been postulated by social psychologists (e.g., LeBon, 1895; Zimbardo, 1970). Indeed, there is much empirical evidence suggesting that this is the case, particularly in the area of helping behavior. For instance, it has been shown repeatedly that people are less willing to help a victim when there are other potential helpers present (Latane& Darley, 1970). This lessened perception of responsibility when in a group has been termed "diffusion of responsibility." Basically, group members share in the culpability for the negative outcomes *We are grateful to Charles Davis, who collected the data for Experiment III, and to the office of the Richmond, Virginia, Commonwealth's Attorney for providing access to their files. tdepartment of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. *Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University /78/ $05.00/0 ( 1979 Plenum Publishing Corporation

3 314 FELDMAN AND ROSEN of the group's actions, whereas persons acting alone have sole responsibility for the negative outcomes of their actions. Hence, the single individual, acting by himself, feels a greater degree of individual responsibility than do the group members. Although the diffusion of responsibility hypothesis seems well-established, research to date has examined the phenomenon primarily in terms of how individuals determine their own responsibility for an outcome. For instance, Mynatt and Sherman (1975) found that individuals giving advice to a confederate felt less responsible for the failure of the confederate if they had dispensed the advice with a group of coactors rather than alone. In contrast, feelings of responsibility for successful advice giving did not depend upon the presence or absence of others. This study thus confirmed, quite directly, that individuals feel less responsible for negative outcomes caused when a group contributes to the outcome than when the individual alone is the determinant. However, research has not examined whether the concept of diffusion of responsibility is applicable in situations in which a person is asked to make judgments regarding the responsibility of other individuals. Attribution theory suggests that attributions made regarding others' behavior follows logic similar to that used when determining self-attributions (Bem, 1972). Hence, it could be predicted that observers will attribute greater responsibility for a negative outcome to an actor who precipitates the outcome alone than an actor who performs jointly with others. A theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility in groups can be derived from Kelley's (1967) three-dimensional attribution model. Kelley suggests that an observer will interpret an action to be situationally or dispositionally determined by analyzing three different kinds of information: consensus (whether a stimulus or entity produces the same response across persons), distinctiveness (whether the action occurs in the presence of other entities), and consistency (whether the action occurs whenever the entity is present). In the present context, the presence of other individuals who contribute to a negative outcome provides consensus information, since a group of individuals are responding in a similar way to a stimulus. Greater consensus ought to lead to more situational and less dispositional causal attributions being made; in turn, this should lead to less responsibility being attributed to each member of a group. Furthermore, the presence of a group of individuals involved in an action leading to a negative outcome can be considered as a distinctive aspect of the situation for each individual actor; this also could lead to greater situational and less dispositional causal attribution for each group member, resulting in lower responsibility attributions for actors when they are in a group. The hypothesis that individuals acting alone will be held more responsible than persons acting in a group would seem to be particularly relevant to judgments that are made in judicial settings regarding the degree of responsibility a criminal has for committing a crime. The diffusion of responsibility hypothesis suggests that those criminals who commit a particular crime by themselves will be adjudged more responsible for the act than those who commit an identical crime, but who do so in a group. Interestingly, though, the legal system of the United States quite explicitly denies such an eventuality; individuals who commit a given act generally are presumed, according to legal tradition, equally responsible for the outcome of the act, regardless of the number of others participating (Hart & Honore, 1959). However, there has been no

4 DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY 315 empirical investigation into how well this legal dictum has been followed in actual practice. The present article tests the hypothesis that there will be diffusion of responsibility in attributions made regarding the actions of an individual who performs an act with a group, rather than alone. Specifically, it is expected that those performing a given act by themselves resulting in negative outcomes will be held to be more responsible for the act than those who perform the same act, but in a group. Three studies were conducted. The first study asked subjects to make responsibility attributions regarding participants in an action which results in negative consequences; the number of participants was varied. In the second study, subjects were asked to determine responsibility and sentence length for a criminal who had committed a theft either alone or with a partner. The third study, archival in nature, examined sentencing data from a sample of criminal trials. Based upon the assumption that prison sentences reflect judgements of attributed responsibility, it was expected that the greater the number of participants in a crime, the less an individual would be held responsible, and the lighter would be the sentence. STUDY I Method Subjects Subjects were 240 male and female undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology classes. They participated in the experiment to obtain extra class credit. Procedure Each subject was given one of four short scenarios which described an incident with negative consequences. For instance, one of the stories told of a man who had spent two months preparing an advertising campaign which later was found to have a number of severe flaws. The man in the story, who served as the stimulus person, had either worked alone or worked with one, two, or three other writers on the campaign. The other stories concerned: (a) an auto mechanic who worked, either alone or with others, on a car that later broke down; (b) a basketball player who had been drinking either alone or with some teammates prior to an important game which was lost; or (c) a student who, either alone or with others, caused a classmate to face expulsion from school. The critical independent variable was the number of participants involved in each of the incidents. Since there were four incidents, each with one, two, three, or four participants, there were a total of 16 scenarios, with 15 subjects randomly assigned to read each scenario. After reading the story, each subject was asked to complete three seven-point Likert-type scales asking how responsible was the protagonist of the story for the outcome, how serious was the incident, and the degree to which the incident was due to situational versus personal characteristics of the stimulus person. Results for each measure were then analyzed in a 4 X 4 between-subjects analysis of variance design.

5 316 FELDMAN AND ROSEN Table 1. Mean Ratings of Responsibilitya Number of participants Story Advertising campaign Auto repair Basketball game Student expulsion Mean "Note: Higher numbers indicate ratings of greater responsibility on a seven-point scale. The two factors were (1) number of persons involved in the incident and (2) the four individual stories. Results and Discussion The results of the analysis of variance for the item asking for attribution of responsibility yielded a significant main effect both for the story variable, F (3,244) = 4.69, p <.01, and for the number of participants, F (3,224) = 4.25, p <.01. The interaction was not significant. The main effect for the story variable indicates that the four stories differed in the degree to which the stimulus person was held responsible. But the major finding of interest was the significant participant effect. Examination of the means, displayed in Table 1, showed that the greater the number of participants in an incident, the less the stimulus person was responsible for the incident. There was a significant linear trend, F (1,224) = 11.30, p <.01, with means, collapsed over stories, of 5.13 for one participant, 5.10 for two, 4.77 for three, and 4.27 for four, where I = not responsible and 7 = completely responsible on the sevenpoint scale employed. Hence, the hypothesis was confirmed: there was greater diffusion of responsibility when more individuals were involved in the situation. Since it was possible that subjects might distort the seriousness of the outcome of each of the four stories according to the number of participants, and thus confound findings relating to responsibility attributions, subjects' perception of the seriousness of the scenario was measured. Perceived seriousness did not relate to group size. The only significant effect on the 4 X 4 analysis of variance was for story, F (3,224) = 8.80, p <.001. Thus, the perceived seriousness of the event was constant across changes in the number of participants, suggesting that diffusion of responsibility effects were not produced by shifts in perception of the severity of the outcomes. One other measure asked, using a seven-point scale, whether environmental and situational factors or personal and dispositional factors regarding the protagonist were more important in determining the outcome of the story. There were no significant effects or interactions on this variable. In general, the results of this experiment support the notion that there is diffusion of responsibility in attributions regarding other person's actions. The greater the number of participants in an event, the less is any one individual held responsible.

6 DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY 317 STUDY II One area in which the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility may be important is in the criminal justice system, particularly in terms of the adjudged responsibility of criminal offenders. Much of the existing research relates particular personal characteristics of offenders (such as race or socioeconomic status) and judges (for instance, attitudes toward law and order) to the length of sentence (e.g., Hagan, 1975). However, it would seem likely that more subtle factors of a social psychological nature relating to the particular criminal offense would be important as well. In particular, it may be that the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility is a partial determinant of sentences given criminals. Although the law states that criminals found guilty of a crime should receive sentences independent of the number of participants involved in the offense, we might expect that a person committing a crime with others would receive a relatively lighter sentence than someone who committed a similar crime but who did so alone. In this study, we used a simulated sentencing situation. Subjects were asked to judge the responsibility of and to sentence an offender after reading a sample case description. On one condition, the criminal carried out a theft by himself; in the other condition, there was another offender who participated equally in the crime. It was hypothesized that diffusion of responsibility would lead the criminal acting alone to be held more responsible and to receive a longer sentence than the criminal who had an accomplice. We also tested directly the hypothesis, derived from Kelley's (1967) attribution model, that relatively more dispositional causation would be attributed to the criminal acting alone, but relatively more situational causation to the offender who had an accomplice. Method Subjects The subjects were 60 female undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology classes and who were participating for extra class credit. The subjects were randomly assigned to experimental conditions. Procedure Each subject was tested individually. Subjects were told that they would be acting as a judge in a criminal case and that they would be given a booklet containing a detailed description of a robbery, committed by a defendant in a criminal proceedings. They were informed that they would then be asked to answer some questions regarding the defendant. Subjects were given the scenario, which was based upon a case used by DeJong, Morris, & Hastorf (1976). The case told of a small restaurant that was held up either by the defendant alone or by the defendant and another person, depending upon condition. During the course of the robbery, shots were fired, but no injuries occurred. Shortly after the robbery, the police captured the suspect(s) and recovered all the money that was stolen, and the suspect(s), who had never had a prior conviction, confessed.

7 318 FELDMAN AND ROSEN After reading the case, the subjects completed a questionnaire containing the dependent measures. Subjects first were asked to determine the length of the jail sentence appropriate for the defendant (from one to fifteen years) and to rate the degree of responsibility the defendant had for the crime (on a seven-point Likert-type scale). Subjects were also asked to indicate, using separate seven-point scales, how important personal characteristics and situational characteristics were in causing the crime, and how serious the crime was. Results and Discussion A manipulation check showed that all subjects successfully identified the number of persons involved in the criminal offense appropriate to their condition. The results of the question asking subjects to place themselves in the role of presiding judge in the case and pass sentence showed no significant difference between conditions, t (58) =.08, p = n.s. The mean sentences were quite close (alone condition: M = 6.20; group condition: M = 6.80). This contrasts, however, with the strong difference found on the ratings of how responsible was the defendant, t (58) = 5.01, p <.001. Subjects felt that the defendant was significantly more responsible for the crime when he had committed it alone (M = 6.47 on seven-point scale, where 1 = not responsible and 7 = completely responsible) than when he committed the crime with one other person (M = 5.43). Thus, there was diffusion of responsibility in terms of a direct measure of responsibility; but the more indirect measure of responsibility, sentence length, showed no difference between conditions. The hypothesis that dispositional characteristics of the defendant would be weighted more heavily by the subjects in attributing the underlying cause of the crime in the alone condition than in the group condition received some support. Results of the question asking "how important were personal characteristics (personality, traits, character, personal style, attitudes) in causing the crime" showed a marginally significant effect for group size, t (58) = 1.40, p <.08. Subjects in the alone condition rated dispositional characterisitcs as being significantly more important (M = 4.95, where 1 = extremely unimportant and 7 = extremely important) than in the group condition (M = 4.35). Although results on the second question relating to the hypothesis asking how important were situational factors in causing the crime were not significant, t (58) =.19, p = n.s., the results on the importance of dispositional traits do suggest that subjects felt that the criminal was more personally responsibie when he committed the crime alone than when he had an accomplice. However, these results can only be considered suggestive. As in Experiment I, there was no difference in ratings of how severe the consequences of the crime were according to the number of participants. Thus, perceptions of the seriousness of the outcome did not vary between the two conditions. Generally, the results support the hypothesis of greater responsibility being assigned to single offenders as opposed to a perpetrator who commits the crime with an accomplice. Curiously, this phenomenon was not translated into differences in actual sentences assigned to the criminal in the story. In fact, the correlation between responses in the responsibility and sentence measures was calculated and found to be of a very low magnitude (r =.04, p = n.s.). Perhaps the subjects felt more comfortable when ascertaining responsibility than sentence length, and this led to a conserva-

8 DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY 319 tism on the part of ratings of how long the criminal ought to serve. Such a constraint could have resulted in a "bottoming" effect, in which subjects in both conditions gave relatively low sentences to the criminal. Although support for this explanation is reflected in the low mean sentence given the criminal in general (M = 6.50 across both conditions), this is highly speculative. It seemed reasonable to attempt to circumvent the artificiality of college students role-playing judges and to examine naturalistic sentencing data. STUDY III In this study, the length of sentence given to offenders in actual court proceedings was examined. While the legal tradition of this country states that criminals found guilty of a crime should receive sentences dependent upon the nature and consequences of the offense, without regard to the number of others involved, it is possible that the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility may partially govern the sentences awarded criminals. If this were the case, we might expect that a person committing a crime with others would receive a relatively lighter sentence than someone who committed a similar offense but who did so alone. Method The sentencing records for a two-year period ( ) were obtained from the Richmond, Virginia, Commonwealth Attorney's Office. To maintain control for the nature of the crime, only one type of offense was examined: thefts in which $25 or more was stolen. The actual length of jail sentence (excluding time given as a suspended sentence or probation), determined by the presiding judge in each case, was categorized according to the number of people involved in the perpetration of the crime. Because few of the thefts included more than two participants, it was decided that only the two categories of sole or multiple perpetrators would be used. A sample of 70 sentences given to sole perpetrators and 70 sentences given to those involved in crimes with more than one perpetrator was used. Results and Discussion Since the distribution of punishments was quite variant and nonhomogeneous, a logarithmic transformation, appropriate for time scores (Myers, 1966), was used to analyze the data. The mean transformed sentence for single perpetrators was.871 (raw score = 9.06 years), while the mean transformed sentence for multiple perpetrators was.757(raw score = 7.67 years). The difference in samples was significant, t (138) = 2.00, p <.025, one-tailed. Hence, as predicted, persons sentenced for committing a robbery by themselves were given relatively heavier sentences than those who committed an equivalent crime, but in a group. Of course, it is possible that some third factor related to the number of individuals committing a crime is actually the cause of the lighter sentence given multiple defendants. Two of the most plausible variables are the seriousness of the crime committed and the age of the defendants committing the crime. Both factors might be expected to be associated with sentencing length. To test this possibility, an analysis of

9 320 FELDMAN AND ROSEN the monetary value of the stolen goods and the age of the defendants was made in the cases in which these data were available from the judicial records. The results of these analyses showed no significant difference between single- and multiple-participant crimes for either monetary value, t(50) =.76, or age of defendant, t(96) =.43, and the pattern of higher sentences for single than multiple perpetrators was apparent in the subsamples. Still, the heavier sentences given individual defendants must be interpreted cautiously. The finding that individual perpetrators receive somewhat heavier sentences than group offenders is interesting in light of the specific legal doctrines against such an eventuality. It is a principle of the legal code of most states and the federal government that all participants involved in a crime are equally responsible for the act. If defendants are held to be equally responsible, regardless of the number of persons involved, they chould receive similar sentences, all other factors being equal. An explanation for the discrepancy between the law and what occurs in fact probably lies in the attributional effect, found in the first two studies, of viewing multiple participants as more responsible than single participants. Given the wide discretionary powers that judges have in setting sentences (they are empowered to take into account the background of the defendants and "all other relevant facts"; Code of Virginia, 1975, p. 141), it is not surprising that judges may consider the number of perpetrators involved in a crime when setting sentence. GENERAL DISCUSSION In three studies, evidence for the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility in attributions regarding others' actions was found. In the first experiment, judgments made of a short scenario in which the actions of varying numbers of participants resulted in a negative outcome showed an inverse relationship between number of participants and degree of attributed responsibility: the greater the number of those involved in an action, the less was the protagonist of the story thought to be responsible for the outcome. In the second study, the focus was upon the length of sentences and degree of attributed responsibility for criminal offenders, determined by subjects who read a detailed description of a crime in which either one or two people participated. Single offenders were held more responsible than those who committed the crime with a partner, although there was no difference in sentence length between the two conditions. Finally, in Study III, a naturalistic field study showed that criminals were given heavier sentences if they had committed a robbery by themselves than if they were accompanied by coparticipants. In all three studies, it appears that the results may be taken as an indication of the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility. It seems that an individual in a group is seen as sharing in the responsibility for the outcomes that the group obtains, while persons acting alone are viewed as having a relatively greater degree of culpability for the eventual outcomes of their actions. The results of the last study, in which judges were shown as giving relatively higher sentences to those who committed crimes alone than those in groups, seem particularly compelling, given that they represent real-world occurrences. The data suggest that judges, criminal justice experts who are certainly familiar with the law, are susceptible to the same kinds of attributional biases as are laymen. Although it is

10 DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY 321 not unusual to find the same processes operating in both experts and nonexperts (see, for instance, Slovic, Fischhoff, & Lichtenstein, 1976), the fact that the law specifically promulgates that all participants in a criminal act may be considered as responsible for the outcome as if only one person had committed the crime suggests that the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility is particularly powerful. In contrast to the data from judges' actual sentences, the college-level subjects who participated in Experiment II did not recommend different sentences to the offender in the story they read according to whether he was alone or had a partner. However, they did rate the single offenders as more responsible than the offender with a partner. Apparently, judgements of responsibility did not relate to ascribed punishment. One reason for this may be due to the nature of the crime described to the college subjects; in the description, the criminals are unsuccessful, the money that was stolen was recovered, and no injuries occurred. Furthermore, this type of crime is typically rated as being relatively low in seriousness (Sellin & Wolfgang, 1964). Hence, subjects may have given relatively low sentences based more on the nonsevere outcome of the crime rather than on the actions leading to the outcome. In addition, Pepitone (1975) has pointed out that the degree of punishment given an offender is based upon not only the desire to obtain justice for the criminal act but also to deprive him of freedom (i.e., make him suffer) and to attempt to reform him. If either of these latter motives had predominance in our subjects' thinking, the number of offenders involved may have been secondary in reaching a decision. The results of Experiment II, however, do provide some support for an attributional analysis of the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility using Kelley's (1967) three-dimensional model. It was hypothesized that diffusion of responsibility may occur because the presence of a coactor provides consensus and distinctiveness information which leads observers to attributions that are less dispositional and more situational in nature. In turn, this may lead to attributions of relatively less responsibility for persons acting in groups. The finding of the trend in which subjects rated dispositional and personality characteristics as being somewhat more important in causing the crime for offenders who acted alone than for the joint offender gives some support for this hypothesis. But we must view these findings cautiously, because Study II does not directly show that attributions mediate the ratings of responsibility given the participants(s) in the crime. Moreover, in none of the experiments was it demonstrated unequivocally that perceptions of responsibility directly affect punishment. Still, the findings are suggestive that attributions of responsibility are affected by the number of participants in an action, and in turn these attributions lead to ratings of differential punishment. Of course, there are other explanations for the present finding that invididuals are held more responsible than group members for negative consequences. Equity theory (Walster, Berscheid, & Walster, 1976) suggests that observers may attempt to maintain equity between the profits of a crime and the costs (i.e., punishment) accorded the participants. Since codefendants may be assumed to divide the profits of a crime, equity theory would suggest that the punishment should be divided as well. Thus, single participants (who profit alone from the crime) would be expected to receive heavier sentences than group members. Although the present results do not supply an unequivocal explanation for the phenomenon of diffusion of responsibility, it would seem that Kelley's attribution

11 322 FELDMAN AND ROSEN model represents a useful theoretical perspective for understanding the processes involved. The term "diffusion of responsibility" represents, after all, merely a descriptive label and does not provide a theoretical understanding of the phenomenon. Future research along these lines would be desirable. REFERENCES Bem, D. J. Self-perception theory. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 6. New York: Academic Press, 1972, pp Code of Virginia, 1950, Annotated, Vol. 4-A. Charlottesville, Virginia: The Michie Company, DeJong, W., Morris, W. N., & Hastorf, A. H. Effect of an escaped accomplice on the punishment assigned to a criminal defendant. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1976, 33, Hagan, J. Law, order and sentencing: A study of attitude in action. Sociometry, 1975, 38, Hart, H. L. A., & Honore, A. M. Causation in the Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Kelley, H. H. Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium in Motivation, 1967, Vol. 15. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, Latane, B., & Darley, J. M. The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn't he Help? New York: Appleton- Century-Crofts, LeBon, G. Psychologie des foules. Paris: F. Olean, (Translated The Crowd. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896). Myers, J. L. Fundamentals of Experimental Design. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, Mynatt, C., & Sherman, S. J. Responsibility attribution in groups and individuals: a direct test of the diffusion of responsibility hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, Pepitone, A. Social psychological perspective on crime and punishment. Journal of Social Issues, 1975, 4, Sellin, T., & Wofgang, M. The Measurement of Delinquency. New York: John Willey, Slovic, P., Fischhoff, B., & Lichtenstein, S. Cognitive processes and societal risk taking. In J. S. Carroll & J. W. Payne (Eds.), Cognition and Social Behavior. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Walster, E., Berscheid, E., & Walster, G. W. New directions in equity research. In L. Berkowitz and E. Walster (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Psychology, Vol. 9. New York: Academic Press, 1976, pp Zimbardo, P. G. The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In W. J. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970, pp