Attributions of accidents to "human error" in news stories: Effects on perceived culpability, perceived preventability, and perceived need for punishment.

Attributions of the causes of accidents to human error are problematically reductive, yet such attributions persist in media coverage. Few experiments have examined how human error attributions affect people's perceptions. An experiment compared attributions of accidents to "human error" versus other causes ("mechanical failure," "technical error," or "computer error").