Who is to Blame for Miscommunication? Speakers are Blamed More than Listeners

Abstract: When something goes wrong in a conversation, who is held more responsible: the speaker or listener? Four preregistered experiments (total N = 1,464; and nine additional studies, total N = 4,111) suggest that people assign more responsibility for communication outcomes to communicators (e.g., speakers, writers) than receivers (e.g., listeners, readers). During impossible communication tasks, observers were more likely to (unfairly) blame speakers than listeners (Study 1). Both writers and readers allocated more responsibility to writers for both successful and unsuccessful outcomes (Study 2). This bias seems to be due to perceptions of communicators having more control than receivers over possible conversation outcomes (Study 3). In Study 4, higher-quality communicators received less blame, but even the highest-quality communicators received similar blame as (lower-quality) receivers. Overall, the studies identify a pervasive tendency to blame communicators more than receivers for bad communication outcomes, even when outcomes are outside of communicators’ control.

Keywords: responsibility, blame, communication, control