Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The law of product liability starts with the idea that a product should safely perform the function that it is for: a plaintiff can recover if she used the product for its intended purpose, but perhaps not if she misused the product. Previous work in psychology has suggested that people reason about artifacts in terms of their purpose. Yet, no work has tested the effect of misuse on judgment and decision-making, in particular in the context of product liability, or creator accountability. Two studies (N = 280, N = 282) show a robust effect of misuse on liability judgments, such that people are less likely to blame the creator in the case of misuse (vs. normal use). Additionally, both studies show a consistent pattern with regard to the role of individual differences in narrow teleology. When a product is misused, individual differences in teleology are strongly associated with liability judgments, but there is no such association when the product is used normally. This asymmetry suggests that judgments of misuse may be best explained in terms of what objects are for.