Attributions of accidents to "human error" in news stories: Effects on perceived culpability, perceived preventability, and perceived need for punishment

Attributions of the causes of accidents to human error are problematically reductive, yet such attributions persist in media coverage. Few experiments have examined how human error attributions affect people's perceptions. An experiment compared attributions of accidents to "human error" versus other causes ("mechanical failure," "technical error," or "computer error"). Participants (N = 971) from an online sample read one of 50 real news excerpts describing accidents from a broad array of domains (e.g., aviation, automobiles, manufacturing, and infrastructure, among others). Stories kept the same or similar details, with only the causal attribution altered to compare human error to other causes. With human error attributions, participants were in greater agreement with the statement that an individual deserved to be punished for the accident and in less agreement that an organization or company was responsible for the accident. People also perceived past human error accidents to have been more preventable, although ratings of prospective preventability were not significantly different for human error versus other attributions. The idiosyncratic details of particular accidents contributed more variance to perceptions than the causal attribution. The same pattern of results was replicated in a second experiment (N = 1195), and new analyses found no evidence that the relationship between causal attributions and perceptions was moderated by the personal relevance of the news story. Our findings suggested that, when an accident is attributed to human error in media, the public may be less likely to expect examination or mitigation of systemic shortcomings (e.g., in design, organizational practices, etc.) that precipitate accidents.