Why blame feels so hard to take

When something we do produces a positive result, we actually perceive it differently than we would if that same action yielded a negative result. In particular, people feel a greater connection between voluntary actions and their outcomes if those outcomes are good than if they are bad. The discovery, reported in the journal Current Biology , yields important insight into notions about personal responsibility. "Our result suggests that people may really experience less responsibility for negative than for positive outcomes," says Professor Patrick Haggard of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. "This is not merely a retrospective justification about how well we have done: the actual experience that we have changes, even in basic aspects like its timing." The researchers used a standard approach to explore a phenomenon known as 'sense of agency', which refers to the feeling that one's voluntary actions produce some external sensory event. For instance, if you flip a light switch and a light comes on, you often experience those events as nearly simultaneous, even if there is a bit of a lag. People may really experience less responsibility for negative than for positive outcomes.