The secret to blame

This blog is less about law, rather this is more about how blame works in the mind of others, not in the eyes of the law. Please note this blog is not ment to criticize the US legal system in anyway. I have great respect for what the US legal system and its design.

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Blame, defined by the Oxford Learners Dictionary as “To think or say that

somebody/something is responsible for something bad.” Blame in reality is so much more complex in our minds. There are several factors that affect how we blame as well as who we blame. Understanding these factors help in understanding our minds to a greater degree, and further enhancing the ways in which we utilize them.

Blame is an automatic function of the brain that comes from an instinct to protect one's ideas and beliefs. By blaming others social norms are created of what is wrong and what is right. Along with teaching wrong from right, blame’s purpose is also to separate wrongdoers from rightdoers to ensure a community can function in a proper orderly form. Ensuring that members of society that do a morally wrong action get punished comes from a natural drive. This is likely how legal systems came to be in society, a natural drive to punish morally wrong people.

In a modern day standpoint, blaming and separating the well behaved from wrong behaved exists solely in a legal world of criminal law. In criminal law how worthy someone is of blame of a crime, or blameworthiness is a long thought out process that uses factors like how intentional was the action, how intentional was it, how close was the convict to the crime, and several other factors. One factor that blameworthiness does not take into account is the moral character of the convicted. In other words we blame a convict for what they did, not for who they are.

Psychology on the other hand tells us the exact opposite. How we blame someone goes hand in hand with how they are perceived from a moral stand point. If two people are accused of the same crime, the one perceived as having a ‘good’ morality will often do better in a court of law than someone perceived as having a ‘bad’ morality. In short, how people blame someone if based off of how they are perceived. This often leakes into courts of law where a jury might make their verdict based on how one is perceived in their eyes.

The way this works in our brain, in my opinion, is fascinating. First we have our beliefs such as cheating in sports is wrong. Now if these are our beliefs, anyone acting against them is wrong in our eyes. This means if a transgressor accused of theft was once a coach in football who was previously convicted for giving  his players performance enacting drugs we view him as morally wrong and thus view him as more of a criminal. This may lead one to ignore evidence just to convict him as in their minds someone who has once acted wrong is likely to again. While this may seem absurd this is a subconscious action, not one that we have much control over.

Knowing how blame works in our mind is the first step. Understanding this complex and wide variety of factors that feed into our blame making will help one to prevent blaming someone purely because we don't like them. That is the secret to blame

Nadler, Janice & Mcdonnell, Mary-Hunter. (2011). Moral Character, Motive, and the Psychology of Blame. Cornell law review.