Physical effort and the Sense of Moral Responsibility

Abstract

Responsibility can be defined as the belief that one possesses the pivotal power to provoke or prevent subjective crucial outcomes. Responsibility is crucial in the field of law. Institutions seeking to control individuals need to identify responsible agents to adequately punish or reward them. The present study is the first to empirically test the influence of task-unrelated physical effort on the sense of responsibility. The sense of responsibility was measured with a Likert-type response format. In Experiment 1, effort was manipulated independently of the task by requiring the participants to pull stretch bands of varying resistance levels. In Experiment 2, effort was manipulated by requiring the participants to press the keyboard either fast or slowly. Our results suggest the sense of responsibility is not significantly influenced by effort. However, the participants on average felt more responsible in moral dilemmas than in neutral dilemmas. Moreover, this effect was stronger for females who experienced a greater sense of responsibility than males. These results allow us to conclude that agency and responsibility might not be connected in the ways previously described in the literature.