Distributing Blame Among Multiple Entities When Autonomous Technologies Cause Harm.

As autonomous technology emerges, new variations in old questions arise. When autonomous technologies cause harm, who is to blame? The current studies compare reactions toward harms caused by human-controlled vehicles (HCVs) or human soldiers (HSs) to identical harms by autonomous vehicles (AVs) or autonomous robot soldiers. Drivers of HCVs, or HSs, were blamed more than mere users of AVs or HSs who outsourced their duties to ARSs.

How unexpected events are processed in theory of mind regions: A conceptual replication.

Recent research in social neuroscience has postulated that Theory of Mind (ToM) regions play a role in processing social prediction error (PE: the difference between what was expected and what was observed). Here, we tested whether PE signal depends on the type of prior information people use to make predictions - an agent's prior mental states (e.g.

What We Owe to Family: The Impact of Special Obligations on Moral Judgment.

Although people often recognize the moral value of impartial behavior (i.e., not favoring specific individuals), it is unclear when, if ever, people recognize the moral value of partiality.