Previous research using a single scenario describing an accidental event in a restaurant has shown that using an agentive (vs. nonagentive) language leads to higher assessments of blame and financial liability. This was replicated for English and only partially for Croatian. This paper extends previous findings by examining whether linguistic agentivity effects can be generalized to other situations in English and Croatian. In the first experiment, 462 participants from Croatia assessed 13 scenarios describing accidental events, each in an agentive or nonagentive version, which differed in the use of verbs: transitive in the agentive and intransitive in the nonagentive version. Participants rated the blame of the person causing the accident and the proposed punishment. Linear mixed-effects model confirmed an effect of linguistic agentivity on the perception of blame in Croatian. Analyses at the level of individual scenarios showed a significant effect of the experimental manipulation on blame in four scenarios and no effect on punishment in any of the scenarios. In the second experiment, 200 participants from the USA assessed the same 13 scenarios following the same procedure. Linear mixed-effects model again confirmed the effect of linguistic agentivity on the perception of blame in English. Analyses at the level of individual scenarios showed a significant effect of the experimental manipulation on the perception of blame in four scenarios and an effect on the assignment of punishment in two scenarios.
Tonković et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: