Are we responsible for our actions?

The Sage

Like “wealthy tycoon” or “thin ballerina”, the adjective in “responsible adult” can usually be taken for granted, as can its meaning. You are responsible for anything that happens as a consequence of something you had control over and which you could reasonably be expected to have anticipated.

In practice, however, we attribute praise and blame very differently to situations in which exactly the same degree of control is in place and the consequences are very similar. For instance, you would be judged morally culpable if you didn’t walk across a shallow stream to try to save a child at the cost of your £70 shoes, but few would think you reprehensible for not putting £50 in a collection tin that could save 10 lives, even though it is cheaper and easier.

So what makes the difference? It seems that the more direct the physical contact between agent and consequence, the more we feel people are responsible. This has been demonstrated by a set of experiments around people’s willingness to sacrifice the life of one person in order to save many more. It feels wrong to push a man to his death in order to save 10 others, whereas it often feels right to pull a switch that leaves one person dead instead of 10 others. Same consequences, same degree of control, very different intuitions. Similarly, downloading a film illegally feels less wrong than buying a pirated DVD; reading your partner’s emails feels less sneaky than reading their diary, and so on.

Empathy is arguably what allows morality to get off the ground in the first place, and there are limits as to how much we can and should challenge the deep-seated intuitions that spring from it. That does not mean we should just be sanguine about the times when it leads us morally astray. Responsibility is one area in life where philosophy and psychology leave us with the message: do not trust your feelings. You carry responsibility for whatever is within your control, whether you feel its weight or not.

The Shrink

Of all the quotidian issues that test our wisdom, how much responsibility to take for things is one of the most challenging. Many people seem to lack a responsibility reflex, reaching for the blame button any time something goes wrong: it’s the fault of others, the past, the government … Indeed, in some therapies, the appearance of any flicker of responsibility is a very significant event. If we can acknowledge that we are not just passive recipients but have a role in directing the play of our life, we may be able to turn things around.

But an excess of responsibility can be just as much of a problem. Not surprisingly, thinking that everything that goes wrong is your fault comes with corrosive feelings of guilt and the perception that you have done something wrong whether you have or not.

A useful cognitive behaviour therapy tool for such situations is the responsibility pie. If you are feeling bad about something and suspect you might be taking too much on yourself, list all the people and circumstances that contributed to a certain outcome, then draw a pie chart, allocating bigger or smaller slices depending on your judgment of relative responsibility. Of course we can’t disentangle all the complex interactions that led to a situation but the aim of this exercise is to see that there are always many factors contributing to any outcome.

The tension between attributing too much and too little responsibility also turns up in our relationships. Taking context into account is laudable: “she had a hard life”; “he was brought up like that”. But if we excuse too much, we risk creating an environment that doesn’t encourage responsibility. It may be true that she had a hard life, but that doesn’t mean she is justified in not making an effort. We have to hold people responsible unless we have good reason not to.

The line between remembering that things happen in contexts and justifying or excusing ourselves or others may be thin but it is hugely important. We should watch out that we don’t let mitigation turn into exculpation.

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