Preregistered direct replication of the linguistic frame effect on perceived blame and financial liability

Purpose

Fausey and Boroditsky (Psychon. Bull. Rev., 17, 2010, 644) demonstrated that agentive descriptions of accidents can increase perceived blame and financial liability. We conducted direct replications of their studies 1 and 2 in English, as originally used, and in Croatian.

Methods

Participants in the first experiment read either an agentive or a nonagentive description of an incident that resulted in a fire and rated the level of blame and financial liability of the main character in the story. The second experiment examined the direct influence of language on financial liability assessments while manipulating the blame level. Participants were presented with the same story as in the first experiment with the added sentence about the blame level attributed to the main character by an independent panel. We used the materials from the original studies and replicated the studies using a large sample of native English-speaking residents of the USA and Croatian students.

Results

We successfully replicated original findings in English, but results of the experiments conducted in Croatian were mixed. In the first experiment, we found a smaller effect of agentive language and only on the blame level and not on the proposed financial penalty. In the second experiment, we did not find the effect of agentive language on the proposed fine.

Conclusions

Our experiments confirmed the original findings in English. The effect might exist in Croatian too, but its exact size remains to be determined in future research. Possible explanations of observed differences between results in English and Croatian are discussed.