Effects of magnitude and rectifiability of harm and information value on the reporting of accidental harm-doing

Investigated conditions which regulate the occurrence of reporting after accidental harm-doing. In Exp. I, 68 male undergraduates were led to believe that they had caused great or slight harm, which was either rectifiable or unrectifiable. Ss were alone when the accident occurred, and believed that they were unidentifiable as harm-doers if they left without reporting. As expected, great harm produced significantly more reporting than slight harm; and when the harm was great, reporting occurred more often when the harm was rectifiable than unrectifiable. Exp. II, with 134 Ss supported these findings and suggested that harm-doers attempt to maintain balance between their perceived instrumentality in causing harm and their subsequent instrumentality in its undoing. Additional data on a self-selected control group of 22 Ss labeled "the uninvolved" are discussed. (17 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).