For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

“Who’s to blame?”

So common is that question today that you’d think Americans were about to carve it into the presidential seal or stamp it onto our coinage. Who got us into Afghanistan? Who are Wall Street’s worst chiselers? Who blew Philadelphia’s chances in the World Series? Who’s at fault for passing (if you’re a Republican) or nearly derailing (if you’re a Democrat) the latest healthcare bill?

As the party out of power, Republicans seem particularly consumed with blaming. Last week’s special election in a longstanding Republican district in upstate New York, where a Democrat won, prompted a spate of frenetic finger pointing. Some blamed the party’s vociferous right wing, since it was their attacks on the moderate Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, that drove her out of the race at the eleventh hour, replaced by an arch-conservative whom voters couldn’t stomach. But national right-wingers are castigating the district’s Republican elders for picking Scozzafava in the first place, arguing that if a real conservative had been allowed to campaign from the beginning, the race would have been theirs.

This, of course, is simply a cameo of the GOP’s big-picture debate, where moderates blame conservatives for welcoming only hard-right voters while conservatives lambaste moderates for diluting true conservative principles. The problem isn’t peculiar to Republicans: Think about the infighting among Democrats in past decades about who is a real liberal. At the moment, however, the fratricidal blame seems particularly virulent.

Why should that be? Are today’s issues so serious that we’ve finally decided to figure out, once and for all, who’s to blame? No, we’ve had serious issues for years. Is it possible, then, that the penchant for blaming is driven not by the issues but by the atmosphere? Could it be that blaming begets more blaming? Is blame contagious?

That last point is the intriguing thesis of a scholarly article published in the October 17 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Titled “Blame Contagion: The Automatic Transmission of Self-Serving Attributions,” it reports on four recent experiments conducted by authors Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California and Larissa Tiedens of Stanford University.

By “blame contagion,” these researchers don’t mean simply that if you blame me, I “catch” that habit and blame you back. Nor do they mean that, after being blamed, I’m more apt to blame others. They’re saying something more subtle. Apparently we soak up a propensity to blame, which they define as “the act of attributing a personal failure to another person or event,” from any atmosphere where people are busy casting blame, even when the issues have nothing to do with us.

To test their hypothesis, Fast and Tiedens asked two groups of students to read slightly differing versions of a news story about California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Each version described a special election he called in order to pass four propositions. The propositions were defeated, and the whole process cost the state $250 million. In one version of the story, the governor took full moral responsibility for the costly failure, saying that “the buck stops with me.” In the other, he blamed political partisanship and special-interest groups.

The students in the experiment, after responding to some other, unrelated questions, were then asked to write about a failure in their own lives and to explain what had caused it. Those who had read about Schwarzenegger casting blame were significantly more likely to explain their own failure by blaming others than were those who read about him taking responsibility. Similar effects arose in two later experiments. In one, students read about other students blaming the university for their failures to find jobs after graduation, rather than taking responsibility themselves. In the other, students read about a foundation program officer making an unsuccessful grant and blaming the grant recipient, rather than blaming his own lack of judgment. In each case, the blaming contagion carried through to the students: Asked to write about a failure of their own, those exposed to the blame were more apt to blame others.

Why do people blame? Largely, these researchers suggest, to protect their own threatened self-image. If I see situations where people save their skins by blaming others — even if these situations are wholly unrelated to me — I pick up that same behavior. And here’s the scary part: I do it, as they say, “automatically.”

How’s that relevant to our world? Well, here’s a little test of your own. Keep a pad and pencil handy as you watch the news, listen to talk radio, or surf the blogosphere. Jot down every instance where you encounter someone — a politician, coach, corporate executive, educator, commentator, or celebrity — blaming others for failure rather than accepting responsibility. If blame really is contagious, is it any wonder we’re such a blame-ridden society?

Yet there’s also a signal of hope in Fast and Tiedens’ research. When students who’ve read about blame are asked to write about one of their own core values before writing about their own failures — affirming what matters to them from within, as it were — the contagion effect vanishes. Citing earlier research, the authors note that “affirming core values leads to feelings of love, which could, in turn, explain why threatened individuals no longer behave in a threatened manner.”

What can we do to help a culture caught in a contagion of blame? Three things. First, realize that blaming others for our failures, far from being a victimless crime or a bad but unimportant habit, is caustic and catching. Second, make sure our personal default position is set to take responsibility rather than to blame. And third, regularly reaffirm our own core values.

Can we make blaming so entirely shameful, unfashionable, and unpopular that it withers away? Probably not. But whatever we can do to stem this contagion helps create a more civil world.

©2009 Institute for Global Ethics

Find this and previous weeks’ commentaries online as a podcast titled Ethicast™ now available on iTunes. Subscribe today!

“Those in government thought they were opening a valve, but once it was open, much more happened. Wir sind das Volk. The theme of ‘We are the people’ matters not just for Germany, but rather for all those who seek freedom and democracy.”

– Joachim Gauck, Lutheran pastor and former East German dissident leader, speaking Monday on the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall

Source: Washington Post, Nov. 9.

Shooting at military base raises questions about breaking point of military and whether warning signs were missed; U.K. and U.S. leaders warn that corruption in Afghan government needs to be addressed immediately

VARIOUS DATELINES
Moral questions were front and center in coverage of events related to Afghanistan last week. Among the stories:

• As details of the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, continue to unfold, an ethics question has surfaced as some media outlets examine the level of stress encountered by the military and the effectiveness of the systems in place to deal with it. The Washington Post notes that the massive military base has been hard hit by the growing strain on personnel given multiple combat deployments — including a rash of suicides, post-traumatic stress disorder, and worsening substance abuse. Investigators now are focusing on whether the alleged shooter, Army Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a psychiatrist, was driven by stress related to his pending deployment to Afghanistan or by conflicts between his role as a soldier and his Islamic political ideology, the Post reports. The Dallas Morning News notes that Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, a senior Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, maintains that “in a perfect world” authorities would have noticed warning signs and released Hasan from the Army. “There were flags along the way,” McCaul told the Morning News. “He told one of his colleagues that Muslims need to unite. And he wasn’t talking about against the enemies we see, but rather against Americans.”
• British prime minister Gordon Brown warned the Afghan government that he will not continue to risk the lives of his troops to defend a corrupt regime. The Times of London reports that in what it characterized as a clear policy shift, Brown warned Afghan president Hamid Karzai that he is “not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm’s way for a government that does not stand up against corruption.”
• Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed the warning by British PM Gordon Brown and put President Karzai on notice that he must arrest and prosecute corrupt Afghan officials to establish the legitimacy of his government following the scandal-plagued election, according to a report from the Voice of America. Mullen told a group of civilian government leaders that now that Karzai’s re-election has been made official due to the cancellation of a runoff, Karzai must “show visible signs” that he is fighting corruption. Mullen also said the U.S. government is “extremely concerned” about corruption in Afghanistan and if the issue is not addressed, “all the troops in the world aren’t going to make any difference,” according to the VOA.

Sources: Dallas Morning News, Nov. 7 – Washington Post, Nov. 7 – Washington Post, Oct. 6 – Times of London, Oct. 6 – Voice of America, Oct. 6.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 2 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, May 18 — Related Newsline story, May 18.

Under pressure to stanch illicit flow of confidential information on Wall Street, prosecutors take a page from big-time cases

NEW YORK
The U.S. government has ramped up enforcement of insider-trading laws to such an extent that a current case is astonishing observers, who note that prosecutors are using tools and techniques that in the past have been relegated to major mob and drug cases.

Bloomberg reports that the current probe of the hedge fund Galleon relies on evidence gathered through wiretaps, surveillance, confidential informants wearing hidden microphones, and data mining using sophisticated software programs.

The Galleon case is part of a crackdown on insider trading, a crime that is relatively easy to commit but devilishly difficult to prove because there is a fine line between basic stock transactions based on incisive intelligence and illegally obtained proprietary information.

But insider trading is aggressively prosecuted because doubts about the integrity of the stock market undermine its profitability.

Forbes columnist Liz Moyer puts it this way: “The government is under pressure to clean up Wall Street after an era of excess that imploded into the financial crisis. Massive frauds have come to light that regulators had not detected despite ample warning, the most notorious example being the $65 billion swindle carried off over decades by Bernard Madoff, a former chairman of Nasdaq…. Regulators are eager not to let history repeat itself.”

In the Galleon case, prosecutors charge that hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam was at the center of a web of informants who passed along illegal information.

According to the Financial Times, the case now involves charges against 14 people, including two lawyers accused of passing along information about pending corporate mergers and acquisitions in exchange for kickbacks. Four already have entered guilty pleas, but Rajaratnam maintains his innocence.

The backlash of the case sometimes borders on the comical. The Los Angeles Times last week profiled an eavesdropping-detection specialist who is overwhelmed with requests from frantic hedge fund managers who want to know if the government is bugging them.

Sources: Bloomberg, Nov. 6 – Financial Times, Nov. 6 – Los Angeles Times, Nov. 6 – Forbes, Oct. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Oct. 26 — Related Newsline story, May 11 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 7, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 23, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 5, 2007.

He pleads guilty to corruption charges

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.
Bernard Kerik, the former commissioner of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and a onetime nominee for the top job at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, last week pleaded guilty to various corruption charges and now faces up to 33 months in jail.

With the first of his scheduled corruption trials looming, Kerik worked out a last-minute plea deal that drops some of the more serious charges, according to the New York Daily News.

Kerik admitted lying to White House officials who were vetting him for the Homeland Security job, falsifying tax returns, lying about accepting apartment renovations from a construction firm alleged to have mob ties, and faking contributions to a charity, reports New York City television station WPIX.

Kerik’s plea agreement puts an end to three federal trials he faced, according to radio station WNYC.

NBC New York reporter Jonathan Dienst notes that Kerik, who was hailed as a hero for leading the NYPD during the 9/11 terror attacks, now faces the dubious distinction of being the first New York City police commissioner ever imprisoned on federal charges.

Sources: WNYC, Nov. 6 – WPIX, Nov. 6 – NBC New York, Nov. 6 – New York Daily News, Nov. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, July 27 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4, 2008 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 10, 2007.

In related news, Madoff — in prison interview — says SEC never questioned why his multibillion-dollar firm was audited by a tiny firm

NEW YORK
The auditor who rubber-stamped the books of confessed swindler Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud last week, but maintained he was unaware that Madoff was conducting a Ponzi scheme.

David Friehling agreed to a nine-count plea that includes charges of securities fraud, false filings, and tax law violations, CNN reports.

The plea was part of a cooperation deal with the government, according to CBS News.

Sentencing is scheduled for late February. Friehling could face more than 100 years in prison, but his cooperation is likely to mitigate against such a harsh sentence, according to ABC News.

Friehling said he did not independently investigate the assets Madoff claimed or perform any of the other responsibilities of an auditor, ABC reports. But he claimed that he was not aware that Madoff was engineering a Ponzi scheme.

Friehling also claims he and his family lost all of their savings by investing in Madoff’s schemes.

In related news, the Scotsman reports that the transcript of a recently released prison interview quotes Madoff as saying the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission never asked why the books were audited by the tiny accounting firm headed by David Friehling.

Sources: ABC News, Nov. 6 – CBS News, Nov. 6 – CNN, Nov. 5 – Scotsman, Nov. 1.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, July 6 — Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 27 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 23.

AT&T sues over commercial it claims is deceptive; more than a dozen states sue drug manufacturer over allegations of kickbacks; Federal Trade Commission puts together its own band to spoof “Free Credit Report” commercials

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON
Advertising and marketing disputes figured in the week’s ethics news. Among the top stories:

• AT&T sued rival phone company Verizon over an ad that implied that AT&T’s cellular network is full of gaps in service, reports InformationWeek. The dispute centers on Verizon’s display of a map that shows AT&T’s coverage area for 3G service — a high-speed voice and data technology network — and compares it to Verizon’s. The AT&T map has large white gaps that appear to indicate that it has no coverage in many areas, but AT&T claims that the map is misleading and their service “blankets the U.S.” Verizon had not publicly responded to the suit as this story went to press.
• Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have sued drug firm Amgen over an alleged kickback scheme to increase sales of an anemia medication called Aranesp, reports the Wall Street Journal. New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo charges that the company used payments through sham consulting agreements, weekend retreats, and other enticements to induce medical providers to purchase and prescribe the drug. A spokesman for Amgen said the charges are without merit.
• A catchy new ad campaign features singers wailing about their credit report — but it’s probably not what you think. USA Today reports that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has produced video spoofs of the “Free Credit Report” commercials after receiving complaints from people who believed that the commercials touted the free credit reports mandated by the government, but instead signed on for an unwanted service or paid hidden fees.

Sources: InformationWeek, Nov. 6 – USA Today, Nov. 3 – Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Oct. 19 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 12 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 5 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, May 18.

Search giant says Dashboard is not a reaction to consumer worries, but many in press are skeptical of that claim

SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK
In a move that may blunt public apprehension about its monolithic collection of data, Google last week unveiled a new application that lets users monitor how much information the search giant has about them.

The application is called Google Dashboard, a central monitoring site that controls the personal settings on each Google product they use, reports ComputerWorld.

Dashboard displays items such as the number of conversations in your Gmail inbox, how many people are following you on Google Reader, and your most recent accomplishment on Google Tasks, reports PCWorld. In addition, there are icons that indicate if you have made certain information, such as your age, public.

While Google denied that Dashboard was prompted by concern about its compilation of personal information, many in the media, including BusinessWeek’s Rob Hof, say they have no doubt “that Dashboard is intended to blunt complaints that Google collects so much data.”

“In fact,” Hof writes, “Shuman Ghosemajumder, Google’s business product manager for trust and safety, made a point of telling me that the company had briefed some regulators around the world on Dashboard.”

CNET columnist Matt Asay says Dashboard is a “great way for Google to mollify concerned users, putting control in their hands.” But he doubts that the vast majority of Google users will ever employ the application. “Why? Because for all our hand-wringing over privacy — and for good reason — the reality is that most of us, most of the time, really don’t care,” Say writes. “Or, rather, if accessing useful services or getting work done more efficiently requires some privacy concessions, we gladly concede.

“It’s not that we don’t value our privacy,” Say concludes. “It’s just that in many contexts, we value other things as much or more. We weigh the risks versus the benefits, and often the benefits trump the privacy risks.”

Sources: CNET, Nov. 5 – BusinessWeek, Nov. 5 – PCWorld, Nov. 5 – ComputerWorld, Nov. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Nov. 2 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 26 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 19 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 12 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 5.

“Godmother” of crime sentenced for running rackets and bribing police; education minister sacked in wake of corruption probe; some question China’s no-strings-attached aid to Africa

VARIOUS DATELINES
Among the top ethics-news stories of the week come these items from and about China:

• Chinese media have been riveted by the story of a woman described as the “godmother” of organized crime in the city of Chongqing, the BBC reports. Xie Caiping was sentenced to 18 years in prison for running gambling dens, harboring drug users, running prostitution rings, and bribing police to turn a blind eye to her operations. Her case is part of a massive sweep that has netted a half-dozen allegedly corrupt police administrations in that city.
• China’s legislature fired the nation’s education minister in the aftermath of a corruption scandal in a city he used to oversee and amid widespread dissatisfaction with the educational system as a whole, reports the Associated Press. While Zhou Ji was not charged or publicly connected to the bribery case at Wuhan University, he spent much of his career working in the that city’s educational system before being elevated to his ministerial post. According to the AP report, Zhou was the lighting rod for widespread dissatisfaction with the quality and cost of education in China.
• There’s an ongoing ethical controversy over China’s presence in Africa, reports the Reuters news agency. On one side are critics who contend that China is stripping Africa of raw materials and supporting corrupt regimes. But some business leaders and academics in Africa maintain that China is developing badly needed infrastructure on the continent, spurring growth in African markets largely ignored by the West. Chinese policymakers generally are skeptical of the West’s strategy of viewing democracy and transparency as a key to prosperity, according to the Reuters report, and money China gives in return for resources generally comes with no strings attached in regards to governance standards or human rights — a stance aligning with Beijing’s philosophy of “noninterference” in the affairs of other nations.

Sources: BBC, Nov. 5 – UPI, Nov. 5 – Reuters, Nov. 5.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Oct. 19 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, July 20 — Related Newsline story, June 29 — Related Newsline story, June 22.

But most of the U.S. public says hate speech, while repugnant, should be allowed

From Rasmussen Reports:

“President Obama last week signed into law ‘hate crime’ legislation that adds sexual orientation to other protected categories including race, color, religion and national origin.

“A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 49% of Americans feel criminals should be prosecuted more severely if it can be proved that their crime was motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. Thirty-one percent (31%) disagree, and 19% are not sure.

“But most Americans (56%) also say the United States should not ban ‘hate speech,’ which is defined as verbal abuse aimed at the same demographic protected by hate crime legislation. Twenty-three percent (23%) of adults favor a ban on hate speech. Twenty-one percent (21%) are not sure.

“In a June 2008 survey, 88% of voters said, generally speaking, free speech is good for the United States.

“An overwhelming majority (73%) of Americans believe it is better to allow free speech without government interference over letting government decide what types of hate speech should be banned. Just 12% prefer letting the government determine what speech should be banned, and 16% are undecided….

“Women support prosecution of hate crimes more than men. Younger voters favor them much more strongly than their elders….

“Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats feel criminals should be prosecuted more severely for hate crimes. Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are almost evenly divided on the question….

“Sixty percent (60%) of voters now say U.S. society is generally fair and decent, but that’s down nine points since late August and the lowest measure since President Obama took office in January….

“This past summer, 50% of Americans said hate is growing in America in the wake of the murders of a doctor who performed late-term abortions and a military recruiter and a shooting incident at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in which a guard was killed. Thirty-five percent (35%) disagreed, saying they were isolated incidents.”

For the full release from Rasmussen Reports, Nov. 3, click here.

“The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.”

– H. L. Mencken (U.S. journalist, essayist, magazine editor, and culture critic, 1880-1956)