Clever or Lucky?
🧠Psych - 194/200
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What is it?
In the quarter final of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the Germany vs Argentina match came down to penalty shots. Unbeknownst to the Argentinian team, the German goalkeeper, Jens Lehmann, was handed a piece of paper that indicated where each of the Argentinian players was likely to shoot.
Lehmann ended up saving two penalties, and the German team won the game. Clearly, Lehmann deserves credit for the team’s win.
But how much, and on what grounds?
Let us suppose that the following took place: Lehman was told that the first shooter often aims the ball at the left corner.
Lehmann jumped to this corner and saved the ball. For the second shooter, he was told again to expect a shot in the left corner.
However, this time Lehmann jumped in the opposite corner, and again saved the shot, even though his opponent kicked the ball in the unexpected direction.
Would you give Lehmann more credit for the first, or the second save? And suppose Lehmann had failed to save both shots.
Would you have blamed him more for failing to save the shot that went in the expected direction, or the unexpected one?
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What do I need to know?
How do people hold others accountable for the outcomes of their actions? They proposed a computational model that assigns responsibility based on what the observed action discloses about the person and the causal role played by the person's activity in causing the outcome.
The model first infers what type of person someone is based on their actions. It then compares a prior anticipation of how a person will behave to a posterior expectation based on observation of the person's action.
According to the model, a person is blamed for negative results if the posterior expectation is lower than the prior, and credited for positive outcomes if the posterior is higher than the prior.
We model a person's causal involvement using a counterfactual model that analyses how close the action was to being pivotal for the result.
The model captures participants' responsibility assessments with good quantitative accuracy across three experiments covering a variety of contexts.
It also answers a previously unsolved question in the literature concerning the link between action expectancies and responsibility assessments.
The amount of credit given to an unexpected action relies on whether the activity was predictive of good or negative future performance.
References & Studies: -
https://psyarxiv.com/jc72g/
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