After the Accident: Is There a Blame Bias Against the Airline?

Abstract

Based on the deontological ethical perspective and concepts from blame psychology such as the defensive attribution hypothesis and culpable control, it is argued that people are predisposed to blame a transportation company when it is involved in an accident. This was tested in a scenario of an airline accident of uncertain cause, finding that respondents blamed the airline the most among a list of five blamable entities (pilots, mechanics-maintenance-inspectors, the weather, ground crew-air traffic control, and airline). Additionally, based on the virtue theory of ethics and the moral character perspective of blame psychology, it was hypothesized that manipulation of the virtue of the airline (mercenary versus altruistic) would result in less blame assigned to the altruistic airline in a quasi-experiment where the other factor was outcome of the accident (safe landing with a few injuries versus crash with many fatalities). However, the two factors significantly interacted in an unexpected way. The mercenary airline suffering a crash was blamed less than the altruistic airline that crashed, while the mercenary airline that safely landed was blamed more than the altruistic airline that safely landed. The managerial implications of blame bias toward the company are addressed.