Abstract
The control principle implies that people should not feel guilt for outcomes beyond their control. Yet, the so-called ‘agent and observer puzzles’ in philosophy demonstrate that people waver in their commitment to the control principle when reflecting on accidental outcomes. In the context of car accidents involving conventional or autonomous vehicles (AVs), Study 1 established that judgments of responsibility are most strongly associated with expressions of guilt–over and above other negative emotions, such as sadness, remorse or anger. Studies 2 and 3 then confirmed that, while people generally endorse the control principle, and deny that occupants in an AV should feel guilt when involved in an accident, they nevertheless ascribe guilt to those same occupants. Study 3 also uncovered novel implications of the observer puzzle in the legal context: Passengers in an AV were seen as more legally liable than either passengers in a conventional vehicle, or even their drivers–especially when participants were prompted to reflect on the passengers’ affective experience of guilt. Our findings document an important conflict–in the context of AV accidents–between people’s prescriptive reasoning about responsibility and guilt on one hand, and their counter-normative experience of guilt on the other, with apparent implications for liability decisions.
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Notes
A fully autonomous vehicle has been defined by the United States of America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA 2016) as the following: “The vehicle is designed to perform all safety–critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip. Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip. This includes both occupied and unoccupied vehicles. By design, safe operation rests solely on the automated vehicle system”. (NHTSA,2016).
It seems that Mercedes-Benz intended to advertise its AV by ensuring that they would prioritize the occupant’s life above all: “Car and Driver reported on October 7 that Mercedes-Benz has already made a decision that its self-driving cars will always prioritize their own occupants over other road users. The automaker said it was wrong — and possibly illegal” (https://www.businessinsider.com/mercedes-denies-claim-its-driverless-car-will-prioritize-driver-safety-2016-10?IR=T, retrieved March 2, 2020).
That the guilt feeling is appropriate does not mean that it is rational (as advocated by Sussman 2018), nor does it mean that it is irrational, as the logic of appropriateness is not necessarily linked to the logic of consequences (Balsige, 2014), which should be understood in this context as the (necessary) connection between the principle of control and the guilt feeling.
The Ethics Committee of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) has favorably evaluated this research (Committee Internal Code: 113/2020).
“AAA’s [American Automobile Association] annual automated vehicle survey found that 71 percent of people are afraid to ride in fully self-driving vehicles” (Edmons, E., 2019). See also Zhigang et al., 2018.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the participants in the experimental-ethics session at the XIX Ethics and Political Philosophy Week, Ferrol (Spain), October 2018, particularly Carlos Thiebaut, Blanca Rodríguez and Mabel Holgado, for very helpful feedback. We would also like to thank Mabel Holgado for making us pay special attention to the relationship between guilt and remorse. This article is based on research funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, reference number RTI2018-098882-B-I00 and reference number PID2020.119791RA.I00
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Appendices
Appendix 1
Internal Meta-Analysis
Given the conflicting results, we conducted an internal meta-analysis (n = 768) to understand whether:
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(1)
perceived guilt feelings in the Descriptive frame exceed prescribed guilt in the Normative frame, and
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(2)
AV passengers are ascribed less guilt than conventional drivers.
Given differences in the scale length across studies, we first min–max normalized the dependent variable (i.e., from 0 to 1). A two-way ANOVA indicated that the effects of frame, F(1, 764) = 80.61, p < 0.001, eta2p = 0.11, and vehicle-type, F(1, 764) = 9.01, p = 0.003, eta2p = 0.01, were significant. The interaction was non-significant, F(1, 764) = 0.01, p = 0.92. Thus, though both effects were significant, the effect of frame was medium to large, whereas the effect of vehicle-type was small.
Appendix 2
Gender Differences in Guilt
We also examined whether there are gender differences in guilt ratings. To do this, we entered gender as a third factor, allowing it to interact with both experimental manipulations. We observed a main effect of gender, F(1, 757) = 13.33, p < 0.001, and a marginally significant interaction with frame, F(1, 757) = 2.82, p = 0.088. The effect of frame was larger among women, B = 0.21, t = 7.90, than among men, B = 0.14, t = 4.48, ps < 0.001. This difference was due to higher guilt ratings among women (M = 0.85) than among men (M = 0.74) in the Descriptive condition, t = 3.85, p < 0.001. The corresponding effect in the Normative condition was non-significant (M-Women = 0.65, M-Men = 0.61), t = 1.47, p = 0.14.
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Aguiar, F., Hannikainen, I.R. & Aguilar, P. Guilt Without Fault: Accidental Agency in the Era of Autonomous Vehicles. Sci Eng Ethics 28, 11 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00363-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00363-8