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How the psychology of blame can explain COVID-19 responses: new research

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Lecturer in Social Psychology, University of Birmingham

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Senior Research Fellow in Nursing and Public Health, Monash University

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Blame is a common strategy in life. It allows us to escape responsibility for mistakes. During a global pandemic, though, placing blame can be a dangerous strategy.

Former US President Donald Trump famously called COVID-19 “ the China virus ” while facing criticism for his pandemic response. In India, members of the governing party blamed an Islamic missionary group for spreading COVID-19. In Australia, blame has been directed at states and the federal government for COVID-19 missteps.

In our recent research , we looked at how people’s social identity affects blame from a psychological perspective, and how group-level blame has affected responses to the pandemic. Understanding the psychology of blame and its effects is a vital step towards improving the international COVID-19 response, and preparing society for a post-COVID world.

Why we blame

Sigmund Freud suggested that blame makes people feel better because it gives us relief. When something goes out of control, assigning blame takes responsibility away from us and puts it in the hands of others.

A new theory of how we blame was set out by a group of US-based researchers in psychology in 2014. The path model of blame looks at how we place blame on certain actions publicly as a way of encouraging people or groups not to behave a certain way. It outlines a series of cognitive steps that we think through in order to allocate blame, including making a judgement on the actor’s intent.

For example, if a government deliberately does nothing in the face of a pandemic as part of a strategy to increase herd immunity, and this results in rapidly climbing case numbers or deaths, then people will blame them. The blame is the result of an intentional choice made by the government.

On the other hand, if the action doesn’t seem to be deliberate, then we look at whether the government (or other potential wrongdoer) caused a problem without meaning to, and if they could have done something to prevent the consequences. For example, if a government doesn’t correctly identify potential supply chain issues, and this leads to a hold-up in vaccine distribution, then that government will often be blamed, but it will be more dependent on the circumstances. In either case, part of the blamers’ intention is to signal that this behaviour is not acceptable.

We have expanded on these ideas. The social groups that people belong to can influence how they allocate blame. Being part of a group gives people a sense of self and makes them feel good – and they aim to protect that as much as possible.

Group of friends wearing masks

Placing blame elsewhere is a way to maintain that feeling of being good as part of a group. For example, if during his presidency Trump failed to protect the US from COVID-19, this technically violated the “America first” approach that he cultivated . A strong Trump supporter could either accept that Trump and his administration failed, making themselves feel worse about being a Trump supporter, or allocate blame elsewhere, such as to China.

We argue that the social groups we belong to give us the impetus to blame others – and show us where to direct this blame. Blaming another nation for failings over COVID-19 in the US removes responsibility from Trump, maintaining good feelings about being part of the group of his supporters. Trump’s rhetoric on China shows where to place this blame.

Cognition – the path model – shows the reasoning that might be used to place this blame. As a reason to blame China, this hypothetical Trump supporter might suggest either intent – such as “ China deliberately withheld PPE ” – or responsibility without intent (for instance, “ China caused the virus”).

Alternatives to blame

Blame helps solidify the idea of COVID-19 being a problem for someone else, rather than a responsibility issue for all of us. The World Health Organization changed the naming system of COVID-19 variants to avoid the potential adoption of regional names, as naming variants by region likely increases blame and reduces global solidarity.

Blame has hurt the COVID-19 response. Blaming China for COVID-19 in the US is likely to have increased prejudice against Chinese Americans. Placing blame may have made it more difficult for China and the US to work together on responses to the pandemic.

Instead, countries should seek to blame very few and instead praise many for doing the right thing. The best performing countries in the pandemic chose to praise far more than blame.

New Zealand’s approach has consistently won approval for its public messaging around COVID-19. In its approach, thanking the population for doing the right thing helps reinforce a unified, positive identity.

In an ongoing global pandemic, we need to work together. Better understanding the social psychology of blame can improve our pandemic response, and emerge from the pandemic with our social structures intact.

  • New Zealand
  • Donald Trump
  • Social groups

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The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility

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Erin I. Kelly, The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility , Harvard University Press, 2018, 229pp., $35.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780674980778.

Reviewed by Christopher Heath Wellman, Washington University in St. Louis

This book offers a comprehensive challenge to the retributivist conviction that our criminal legal institutions are justified because they mete out the suffering deserved by morally blameworthy wrongdoers. Erin I. Kelly does not merely contend that retributivists cannot justify anything like our existing penal practices, she offers subtle and sophisticated arguments of moral and political philosophy in defense of her striking conclusion that our inclination to blame should play no part in criminal law.

To begin, it is worth noting why retributivism is so attractive. Punishment is typically reserved for those who are duly convicted of committing a bad act (actus reus) with a guilty mind (mens rea). If one did nothing wrong, or if one's wrongdoing was entirely excused, then no one would recommend punishment. But if one deliberately violated someone else's rights, for example, then a negative response seems appropriate. According to retributivism, not only is it permissible to punish culpable wrongdoers, we have positive moral reasons to do so. One way of putting the core retributivist position is to assert that the world is a better and more just place when those who are morally culpable are condemned and given the hard treatment they deserve.

A central component of Kelly's book is her penetrating critique of the idea that our existing criteria of legal guilt map neatly onto any plausible sense of moral blame. In other words, even if the retributive thesis articulated above is acceptable in theory, it would not justify anything remotely like current legal institutions in countries like the United States. Some of the problems with the status quo are familiar to those acquainted with the relevant literature. Two glaring issues are overcriminalization (when people are convicted for behavior -- like recreational drug use -- that is not actually morally wrong) and excessive and/or inhumane punishment (when those convicted are incarcerated for indefensibly long periods in brutally oppressive and psychologically debilitating conditions). But Kelly notes other elements which often garner much less attention, such as the fact that "courts have thrown out racial discrimination as a basis for challenging criminal conviction and sentencing -- for the perverse reason that such discrimination is too common." (p. 8) It is also problematic that many of those actually caught up in our criminal legal system are among the most economically disadvantaged and the least psychologically healthy. Regarding the former, Kelly writes that

People should not be burdened with serious, harmful consequences for breaking the law when they have been deprived of a reasonable opportunity to lead a satisfactory, law-abiding life. Social injustice undermines legitimate law enforcement and dooms prospects for achieving justice through criminal law. (p. 15)

And regarding the latter, she urges that

The criminal law is indifferent to individual capacities partly because it does not want to invite defendants to argue, as some surely would, that they are morally dense or unmoved by moral reasons, thereby leaving jurors to sort out whether such claims are true, on a case by case basis. In other words, it is sometimes by design, rather than by accident -- or viciousness or racism on the part of judges and legislatures -- that criminal law's specification of the conditions under which one is subject to legal punishment departs from morality's specification of when a person can be blamed. (p. 38)

Moreover, while retributivism dictates that a criminal's blameworthiness is a function of both how badly one acts and how pernicious one's mental state is, Kelly notes that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a sentence of twenty-five years to life in prison for stealing three golf clubs because it was the defendant's so-called "third strike." (p. 17) And regarding a defendant's mental state, Kelly claims that

Most morally disabling forms of mental illness, including significant impairments to moral motivation, empathy for others, and the like, are not recognized as legal defenses. Thus, a person who is not morally blameworthy can properly (so far as the law is concerned) be found guilty of criminal wrongdoing. The mental or circumstantial obstacles she faces may excuse her from moral blame, even though her intentional behavior violates criminal laws and renders her eligible for punishment. (p. 80)

An obvious rejoinder for the retributivist would be to concede that her theory does not justify the status quo, but this just shows that we must reform our existing criminal legal systems. For multiple reasons, however, Kelly contends that this move is unavailable to retributivists.

First of all, Kelly argues that we must know much more than that an individual is minimally competent before we assign blame. As she puts it, we should

insist that the mere possibility of right action is not a reasonable basis for moral expectations. Instead, we might maintain that a morally competent individual is someone about whom we can say, not only that it is possible but also that it is substantially likely, that she would act well. (p. 68)

But moving to this more appropriate standard leads to practical and principled issues. When precisely is a person "likely enough" to have acted well? Even if well-trained philosophers and psychiatrists can answer this question, should we feel comfortable with real-world politicians, judges and jurors trying to do so?

Kelly also cautions that we cannot properly assign blame without assessing an agent's motives, but she observes that

It is true that motive is sometimes introduced in the sentencing phase of a criminal trial, although more often as an aggravating than a mitigating consideration. Evidence of cruel or greedy motives can serve to increase the penalty, according to some sentencing guidelines. Overall, however, the legislation of mandatory sentences and other restrictions on judicial discretion counter efforts to individualize sentences in response to a defendant's motives, and motive has increasingly come to be treated as irrelevant to sentencing, at least in the United States. (p. 105)

And third, Kelly warns that justifying our criminal legal practices with retributivism runs afoul of the requirements of public reason. As she puts it,

Blame as a response to wrongdoing contains an element of personal choice. It is morally optional, at least in many places, and people who engage in it do so in a personal way. By contrast, the rules of criminal justice apply coercively to all members of society, and legal rules should be supported by public reasons -- reasons that all members of society should accept. But since there are morally serious perspectives that do not require blame as the appropriate moral response to wrongdoing, the institutions of criminal justice should not mandate public blame. Moral blame does not provide us with public reasons for criminal punishment. (p. 102)

Others are more conversant with the public reason literature than I, but I think Kelly's very interesting argument runs as follows. We should accept something like what Rawls calls "the liberal principle of legitimacy," which requires that political coercion must not be imposed upon constituents for reasons that they can reasonably reject. [1] This edict is problematic for a state's practice of blaming because people may reasonably prefer not to blame wrongdoers, especially when the wrongdoers have endured serious hardships. So when the state takes it upon itself to blame all convicted criminals, it disrespects the autonomy of the victims of these crimes who might reasonably decide not to blame those who have wronged them. It would not be objectionable if our criminal legal institutions put victims in a position to blame those who wronged them, but our criminal legal system goes far beyond this. It elects to blame all convicted criminals, which denies the victims of the personal decision of whether or not to do so.

Given all of these problems, one would not be surprised if Kelly recommended abolishing our criminal legal institutions. She believes that we are not at liberty to do so, however, because the state is obligated to protect the equal rights of its citizens. We should mend, not end, criminal law, and the chief change is that punishment should be act-focused. In particular, Kelly recommends a principle of "just harm reduction," which criminally prohibits citizens from wrongfully harming one another without necessarily blaming those who do break the law. She writes,

A legitimate democratic state must defend, with fair defensive measures, the equal rights of all citizens. But it does not need to blame people who are found criminally guilty in order to take measures to do so. Furthermore, the moral basis of a state's permission to burden criminal wrongdoers with punishment does not license its morally righteous condemnation of them. It is enough that it criticize, even condemn, their criminal acts. Punishment can and should remain act-focused. Doing without blame fits better with the actual basis of criminal liability in criminal law. (p. 121)

Justice requires that none of us should be liable to punishment unless we voluntarily act contrary to the law, so Kelly's view is like retributivism in that it insists those who do no wrong must not be punished. But because her position is act-focused, the criminal sanction takes no stand on whether the person who committed the crime is blameworthy. In short, we need to penalize criminals in order to protect the equal rights of all citizens, but we emphatically do not need to blame anyone, which is a good thing since effectively reducing wrongful harm requires us to penalize many more folks than those few who are genuinely morally blameworthy. In the end, then, Kelly recommends that we transform criminal law so that it is much more like tort law. In tort law, the state can demand that the tortfeasor must compensate a victim without morally condemning the former in any way. Similarly, Kelly believes that our criminal legal institutions can and should mete out sanctions without morally blaming the person who is punished. And if we focus on acts and abandon our practice of blaming persons, perhaps we will be less inclined to unreflectively confine criminals in cages and to continue to shun them after they have served their prison sentences.

There is obviously a great deal to like about this book, but I can imagine a retributivist questioning the morality of moving to an exclusively act-focused approach to criminal law. As Kelly acknowledges, it is largely taken for granted that we all begin with a weighty right against being subjected to hard treatment. The retributivist will insist that individuals forfeit this right only if they commit a bad act (actus reus) with a guilty mind (mens rea). Is Kelly really suggesting that, as long as we do not blame those we punish, we are free to mete out hard treatment to those who commit bad acts regardless of whether or not they acted with guilty minds? Either answer to this question appears problematic. If Kelly is not really dispensing with mens rea, then her approach is not truly act-focused, and it is not clear to what extent she is offering a genuine alternative to retributivism. If she is comfortable doing away with mens rea, however, then many will worry that her harm reduction strategy is not as just as she claims.

Another way to put this point is in terms of culpability. Many believe that we retain our right against being punished as long as we do not act culpably. Is Kelly suggesting that criminal law (like tort law) need not concern itself with culpability? If she is comfortable recommending that defendants may be convicted whether or not they are culpable, then retributivists (among others) will no doubt protest that her proposal is just as prone as deterrence theory to lead to rights violations. If Kelly wants to distance herself from deterrence theorists and insist that culpability is required for punishment to be permissible (and there is some evidence for this, both because she specifies that "Each of us has a basic right that our vulnerability to criminal sanctions depend on our voluntary behavior" (p. 129, emphasis added) and because (on p. 132) she criticizes deterrence theorists for being insufficiently deferential of individual's moral rights), then her approach does not appear to be exclusively act-based. [2] But if Kelly is recommending that we impose criminal penalties upon only those who are culpable, why must we refrain from blaming those we punish? Perhaps Kelly is right that we should refrain from globally condemning those who break the law, but the retributivist will note that we don't incarcerate acts; we put actors in prison, and there is nothing wrong with blaming culpable actors for their bad acts . In sum, retributivists will insist that those who are not blameworthy have a right not to be punished, but there is nothing wrong with blaming culpable wrongdoers for their wrongdoing.

Retributivists might also question Kelly's invoking public reason. This response could come in retail or wholesale form. The retail version does not deny that the state must not coercively impose itself upon its constituents without offering reasons that cannot be reasonably rejected, but it contests Kelly's claim that one could reasonably reject the idea that culpable wrongdoers should be morally condemned and subjected to proportionate hard treatment. Or more minimally, retributivists might insist that their premises are no more vulnerable to reasonable rejection than those to which Kelly helps herself in constructing her alternative theory. Kelly confidently asserts that

people concerned to formulate laws that meet public standards of justification would endorse a principle of just harm reduction that permits the application of criminal sanctions to prevent and to remedy the violations of rights and other important collective interests, at least when any harm imposed on wrongdoers does not greatly exceed the harm they have caused. (p. 131)

It is far from self-evident, though, that this claim would pass the public reason test while retributivism would not.

More generally, a retributivist might simply question why we must restrict ourselves to so-called public reasons. According to a retributivist of this stripe, what ultimately matters is not whether one can reasonably reject whether convicted criminals deserve to be blamed but whether they in fact merit this condemnation. If culpable wrongdoers are blameworthy, then there is nothing wrong with the state's blaming them (even if some people could reasonably deny that they are blameworthy, or reasonably prefer not to blame them). And in defense of this wholesale rejection of public reason, the retributivist might plausibly submit that far more people on the street would affirm that culpable wrongdoers are blameworthy than would affirm Rawls's liberal principle of legitimacy.

In response, Kelly might stress that her view of criminal law remains importantly distinct from tort law insofar as the former involves more demanding criteria of wrongfulness. She might also counter that, while criminal law should certainly include excusing conditions, these cannot be as sensitive to each individual's history and current situation as would be required to assign moral blame. I am not sure how satisfying retributivists will find these responses, but we do not need to wait to assess the discussion this book will provoke to know that this book accomplishes at least three extremely important tasks: (1) it demonstrates that we should be outraged at the grave injustices perpetrated by our current criminal legal institutions, (2) it provides subtle and sophisticated moral and political philosophical arguments that retributivism must be rejected on principled grounds, and (3) it supplies an original vision of how and why we should rethink and reform criminal law. Regardless of how subsequent debates with retributivists unfold, this book is an extraordinarily impressive contribution to some of the most difficult and pressing conversations we are currently having in moral, political and legal philosophy.

[1] John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

[2] It should be noted, though, that on page 127 Kelly explicitly rejects weak retributivism, the view that it is morally impermissible to punish those who do not deserve it.

Cambridge Dictionary

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Meaning of assign blame in English

  • It is too early to identify the precise cause of the accident or assign blame for it.
  • I am more concerned with trying to prevent future crises than with assigning blame for those that have already occurred .
  • The report does not assign blame exclusively to one side or the other.
  • accuse someone of something
  • contributory negligence
  • incriminating
  • incrimination
  • lay something at someone's door idiom
  • level something against/at someone
  • recrimination
  • sacrificial lamb

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A Conscious Rethink

5 Psychological Reasons For Blaming Others (+ How To Stop It)

Disclosure: this page may contain affiliate links to select partners. We receive a commission should you choose to make a purchase after clicking on them. Read our affiliate disclosure.

young woman with glasses pointing the finger, blaming others for her problems

Life isn’t perfect.

Things go wrong, we make mistakes, accidents happen, and life may not pan out the way we hope.

But is your default reaction to find somebody or something else to blame for your problems?

A lot of things that happen to us are the result of multiple contributing factors, and can be caused by a mix of our own actions and those of other people.

For example, if you were to hit a pothole in the road and fall off your bike, it was probably partly due to the fact that the road has been poorly maintained, but also that you were cycling too fast or not looking where you were going.

If that were you, would you be ranting and raging about what your taxes are spent on these days, or would accept the part you played in it and vow to learn from your mistakes?

If you find yourself trying to pass the buck for every mistake you make, then it’s probably gotten you into trouble in the past…

…especially if you try to shift the blame onto your partner, family, best friends, or people you have to work closely with.

No matter how much people love us, there is only a certain number of times most people will tolerate taking the blame for something that genuinely wasn’t their fault.

As well as weakening our relationships, being unable to take responsibility for our mistakes can damage us in other ways.

Life is all about making mistakes. It’s only through getting things wrong that we learn how to do them right.

If we never accept that we’ve made a mistake, how can we ever learn to do things better?

With that in mind, let’s have a think about some of the reasons why we can be tempted to blame others, followed by a look at how to kick the habit of shifting the blame for our problems.

Speak to an accredited and experienced therapist to help you stop blaming others for your mistakes, actions, or problems. You may want to try speaking to one via BetterHelp.com for quality care at its most convenient.

Reasons We Blame Others For Our Mistakes

1. to explain why something happened..

As humans, it’s our default to always look for a cause for something.

We like to have narratives that explain why things happened so that we can add these to our mental story of life.

Rather than turning the light on ourselves or looking at the bigger picture and context, we can explain things more quickly and easily by attributing them to others.

2. To attack someone.

Shifting the blame onto someone else is a subtle way to attack them.

We might do so unconsciously, but if we hold a grudge against someone for some reason – perhaps we feel they’ve wronged us or blamed us in the past – then if an opportunity to blame them presents itself, it can be very tempting to take it.

Blaming them for something is also a tactic we might use to hurt our partners, whether we’re aware that we’re doing it or not.

3. It’s a great defense mechanism.

Shifting the blame directly onto someone or something else is the perfect way to avoid having to reflect on your behavior or delve deeply into your own psyche.

That way you can remain blissfully unaware of your own shortcomings, which can help to maintain a fragile ego.

4. It’s easier that way.

Why would we bother doing all that tricky self-analysis and taking steps to fix a situation if we can just take the blame off our own shoulders and place it down on someone or something else?

Sometimes we convince ourselves that it really is someone else’s fault, but sometimes we know we’re lying.

But we often decide on the spur of the moment that it’s easier to tell a lie than it is to deal with the consequences of the truth.

We learn to lie early on in life and most of us get pretty good at it. We weigh the possibility of people finding out we’ve lied against the consequences we’d have to face if we own up, and often take the easy option.

5. It removes inhibitions.

Blaming other people can provide us with an excuse to act in a hurtful manner.

It’s a way of justifying our actions to ourselves to remove our brain’s natural inhibitions that are there to prevent us from behaving poorly toward others.

It means we can build a thought pattern that allows us to act in a way that our moral compass would normally prevent.

How To Avoid Shifting Blame

It is a good idea to seek professional help from one of the therapists at BetterHelp.com as professional therapy can be highly effective in helping to change your thinking and avoid blaming others for actions you took that led to an unwanted outcome.

Did any of the reasons listed above ring true for you?

If you’ve come to realize that you’re a serial blame-shifter, then I’ve got good news for you.

The first step to changing your behavior is to recognize and accept it, so the fact that you’re reading this article is a fantastic sign.

It means that you’re keen to make changes and become a better person , for your own sake and the sake of those around you.

But how can you start to alter your patterns of behavior?

How can you kick the habit of a lifetime and start accepting the blame for things when appropriate ?

Remember, I’m not advocating blindly accepting blame for everything, but merely realizing when things genuinely are your fault and acting accordingly.

Here are a few helpful steps toward breaking the habit of shifting the blame onto others.

1. Take a deep breath.

When something happens that you know would normally trigger a negative, defensive reaction from you, try to catch yourself in that moment.

Before you react or say anything to anyone, take a deep breath – or several – and identify the feeling within you that makes you want to shift the blame.

Is it embarrassment? Fear? A feeling of inadequacy?

By taking just a few moments to assess the situation and ask what your knee-jerk reaction would normally be, you can, instead, choose to respond in a way that will help everyone involved, including you.

2. Re-frame it as an opportunity to learn.

No one has ever gotten anywhere in life without experiencing some major failures along the way.

Every single mistake we make, from the tiny ones to the big ones, teaches us life lessons and allows us to grow.

So, next time you mess up, fight the urge to blame others for your failures by thinking about what you could learn if you owned up and accepted responsibility.

You can then reflect on why things happened the way they did, and decide on ways to stop it happening again.

3. If you shift the blame, apologize.

Whilst you’re still learning to accept the blame for mistakes you make, you’re undoubtedly going to slip up… repeatedly.

Your first instinct will still be to direct attention away from yourself, so you’ll probably have shifted the blame before you’ve consciously realized what you’ve done.

When that happens, make sure that you face up to it after the fact. Apologize to your partner, friend, family member, or colleague.

Recognize the fact that it was your mistake initially, and that you made a second mistake in trying to escape taking responsibility for it .

The discomfort of the situation will probably encourage you to own up at the first opportunity next time.

4. Keep things in perspective.

Sometimes we can mess up spectacularly, but we’re often guilty of making mountains from molehills.

There’s no point trying to sweep something under the rug and then worrying about it being discovered if you could just accept responsibility in the first place and move on, all the better for it.

Chances are you will imagine the consequences to be far worse than what they will actually be.

Still not sure why you blame others or how to stop?

Speak to a therapist about it.

Why? Because they are trained to help people in situations like yours.

They can help you to recognize when you are about to blame someone and provide tailored advice to help you say or do something different.

BetterHelp.com is a website where you can connect with a therapist via phone, video, or instant message.

While you may try to work through this yourself, it may be a bigger issue than self-help can address.

And if it is affecting your mental well-being, relationships, or life in general, it is a significant thing that needs to be resolved.

Too many people try to muddle through and do their best to overcome issues that they never really get to grips with. If it’s at all possible in your circumstances, therapy is 100% the best way forward.

Online therapy is actually a good option for many people. It’s more convenient than in-person therapy and is more affordable in a lot of cases.

And you get access to the same level of qualified and experienced professional.

Here’s that link again if you’d like to learn more about the service BetterHelp.com provide and the process of getting started.

You may also like:

  • How To Stop Running Away From Your Problems And Face Them With Courageous Resolve
  • How To Think Before You Speak
  • How To Stop Feeling Like A Failure Or A Loser
  • How To Stop Repeating The Same Mistakes Over And Over
  • How To Stop Feeling Guilty For Past Mistakes
  • How To Escape The Karpman Drama Triangle

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About The Author

assigning blame

Katie is a writer and translator with a focus on travel, self-care and sustainability. She's based between a cave house in Granada, Spain, and the coast of beautiful Cornwall, England. She spends her free time hiking, exploring, eating vegan tapas and volunteering for a local dog shelter.

Fear, Sadness, Anger, Joy, Surprise, Disgust, Contempt, Anger, Envy, Jealousy, Fright, Anxiety, Guilt, Shame, Relief, Hope, Sadness, Depression, Happiness, Pride, Love, Gratitude, Compassion, Aesthetic Experience, Joy, Distress, Happy-for, Sorry-for, Resentment, Gloating, Pride, Shame, Admiration, Reproach, Love, Hate, Hope, Fear, Satisfaction, Relief, Fears-confirmed, Disappointment, Gratification, Gratitude, Anger, Remorse, power, dominance, stature, relationships

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Blame Culture Is Toxic. Here’s How to Stop It.

  • Michael Timms

assigning blame

Reward accountability and kindness.

At work, we show kindness by doing things like paying someone a compliment with no ulterior motive or holding the door open for a colleague. Now think about the rare occasions when we’re feeling stressed and snap at a coworker or criticize their ideas. Are we still kind?

  • It turns out we may not be nearly as kind as we think we are. A study shows that the brain responds more strongly to bad experiences than good ones and that it retains the memory of bad experiences longer. In fact, about five positive experiences are equal to one negative experience.
  • While the most destructive behavior in relationships at work may be criticism or stonewalling, the most lethal is blame. We’re naturally hardwired to blame other people when things go wrong. But a bigger challenge is that we don’t realize how often we blame.
  • To eliminate blame and promote kindness on your teams, switch your mindset to a learning mindset and openly share mistakes. That way, teammates will be more likely to acknowledge their part in making a mistake, and stop passing the buck. Next, focus on what you can change. Use a systems approach to problem solving. Instead of asking, “Who’s at fault?” ask, “Where did the process break down?”

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Picture this: Your team is racing against time and working weekends to submit a new client proposal. You finally manage to put all the documents together, and just in the nick of time, you press “send.” You take a deep breath and thank the team for their hard work. The proposal looks great and you’re confident that you’ll probably win it.

assigning blame

  • Michael Timms is a leadership development consultant , author, and speaker specializing in succession planning and creating accountable cultures. His latest book is How Leaders Can Inspire Accountability .

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How to Break the Cycle of Blame in Your Relationship

Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

assigning blame

Ivy Kwong, LMFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in relationships, love and intimacy, trauma and codependency, and AAPI mental health.  

assigning blame

fizkes/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Understanding the Blame Cycle

Causes of blame in relationships, consequences of the blame game, how to navigate blame constructively, cultivating healthy relationship patterns.

A cycle of blame in a relationship occurs when one person places the blame for whatever has gone wrong onto their partner, and makes that blame the focus of their complaint or a conflict. This in turn can make a partner feel defensive and attacked. A cycle of blame serves only to increase conflict and unease, and does not help at all to resolve the issues in a relationship.

You may have found yourself on either side of the blame game, and you may be unsure how to get out of that role. To help you navigate more functional ways to relate, we'll look at what exactly is involved in a blame cycle, why such a thing occurs, and how you can take steps to move into a healthier relationship pattern.

In order to have healthy relationships, we first need to be able to relate positively to ourselves. For example, studies have shown that self-compassion is key to both our overall well-being and our ability to successfully navigate conflict. However, it can be all too easy to get stuck in a negative pattern of behavior that is neither compassionate towards ourselves or our partners.

"The blame game often starts with triggers that are self-reflexive. In other words, we end up projecting onto our partner the very things we are insecure about ourselves," explains co-founder of SOHOMD Dr. Edward Ratush , a sex therapist and Board Certified Psychiatrist. He says this occurs "because the qualities we beat ourselves up over are so ingrained and tough to let go of, it's easy to fall into a similar cycle with our partners."

When trouble arises and our instinct is to blame our partner, that makes them unable to trust us. It also makes it impossible to have a productive conversation about an issue, because we aren't operating from a purely rational or factual place. This may make your partner hesitant to ever bring up problems with you, because they know they're be blamed for your own actions. In turn, that can lead to resentment , and ultimately, the failing of a relationship.

A blame cycle in a relationship can occur whenever we aren't properly focused on taking responsibility over our own actions. When problems arise, the blame cycle may render them unsolvable because the blamer doesn't accept their part in the conflict.

Additionally, the person being blamed is unlikely to behave and communicate in the manner they wish to, because they are operating from a place of self-protection after being blamed for whatever has gone wrong.

It's possible to blame your partner(s) for anything that you feel has gone wrong: This could include a breakdown in communication, a misunderstanding, a lack of meeting expectations you thought were clearly laid out, or disagreement around domestic responsibilities. When a person constantly puts the blame for a negative occurrence onto someone else, there is no limit to what situations may incite them to do that.

Understandably, the process of blaming someone else for all of the problems in a relationship can lead to highly negative outcomes. Let's look at what they are.

Poor Communication

When a person feels that they are blamed for issues either beyond their control or not of their doing, they'll naturally be hesitant to enter into conflict. In turn, this can create a lack of communication . In a normal, healthy relationship, one person is able to say to another when they feel wronged or would like a change to be made.

But if you're going to be blamed for wanting change, you're unlikely to do that. Open communication is a key component of a healthy long term relationship , and the blame cycle can prevent it from happening.

Emotional Distancing

When you feel you can't be open and communicate honestly with your partner(s), that can make it a challenge to be close to them. Because of that, one partner may distance themself emotionally from their relationship. This may be conscious or unconscious, and it may be ongoing or only for brief periods of time.

The longer the blame cycle continues for, the harder it may be for someone who has distanced themself to feel close to their partner(s) again.

It should come as no surprise that in a situation where someone feels blamed, they begin to feel resentful, especially if that blame habit is precluding them from communicating. Resentment can build slowly or quickly, and it can continue to grow over time. It's an unpleasant feeling, and a person may become very upset about their inability to communicate with their partner(s).

Resentment, even if you are trying to keep it hidden inside, can manifest as anything from passive aggressive behavior to poor behavior that isn't representative of how you want to conduct yourself.

Ultimately, if unaddressed or not fixed, the blame cycle can lead to the dissolving of a relationship. Open, forthright communication is necessary for long term relationship survival, and the blame cycle makes that quite a challenge.

Even if communication continues to be regularly occurring, a partner may very well decide they are tired of being blamed for all of the problems in a relationship. Unless action is taken to stop the blame cycle, a breakup can easily be the end result.

Instead of assuming the worst and that the other person has done something to be intentionally harmful, it may be helpful to assume that your partner is doing their best and to provide feedback that would be helpful and constructive to connection instead of harmful and destructive.

While there will be instances in which someone will make a mistake and be at fault, instead of blaming and shaming, it can be helpful to approach conversations from a place of curiosity, thoughtfulness, self-awareness, and working together collaboratively to resolve the issue.

There's a straightforward solution to the blame game: taking responsibility. Just as we must learn to offer ourselves forgiveness, we have to take responsibility for the negative engagements we perpetuate in our relationships.

To begin the process of ending the blame cycle, you'll want to start by communicating with your partner. You can try a different method of communication than you have before, such as learning nonviolent communication . You can also try to operate from a perspective of solving the blame problem together with your partner.

Ratush says that a shift in perspective can be hugely impactful, noting that "it's never easy, and it can feel defeating—even painful—Especially when the emotional wounds are still fresh. However, one simple shift in perspective has the power to transform the value and meaning of a relationship."

If the blame cycle feels impossible to defeat alone, you and your partner(s) can try couples counseling . This is an excellent option for learning communication techniques together. Additionally, the blamer may have their patterns of thought and behavior challenged by a therapist and receive support in tracing these patterns back to their original source for healing.

With active involvement, practice, and willingness to do the work in the therapeutic process, couples counseling may help improve communication, understanding, and stuck patterns in a relationship.

Approaching conflict from a place of curiosity, care, and compassion can be a good place to begin when looking to change behaviors around blame. According to Ratush, you get out what you put in. "Commitment to the process determines a couple's success," he says.

Holding care, compassion, and empathy for ourselves and those close to us make positive outcomes much more possible. That empathy and compassion can lead us to forgiving both ourself and our partner(s) for missteps and mistakes, and it can allow us to remember that in general, we're all doing our best. Keeping in mind that your partner loves you and isn't trying to intentionally hurt you can help the blame reflex diminish.

Change may not happen immediately, but slowly and over time, you can transform the dynamic of your relationship into one that isn't centered around blame. "As each person demonstrates their commitment to taking responsibility, it compels the other to try and do the same," Ratush explains. Momentum in relational work is real and powerful."

Yarnell LM, Neff KD. Self-compassion, interpersonal conflict resolutions, and well-being. Self and Identity. 2013 Mar;12(2):146–59. doi: 10.1080/15298868.2011.649545

Lavner JA, Karney BR, Bradbury TN. Does couples’ communication predict marital satisfaction, or does marital satisfaction predict communication? J Marriage Fam. 2016 Jun 1;78(3):680–94. doi: 10.1111%2Fjomf.12301

By Ariane Resnick, CNC Ariane Resnick, CNC is a mental health writer, certified nutritionist, and wellness author who advocates for accessibility and inclusivity.

Deploy Yourself School of Leadership - Sumit Gupta

From Blame Culture to Accountability – A 6 Step Framework for Teams

Nov 15, 2020 | Leadership and Management | 0 comments

Culture plays a key role in determining an organization’s overall performance .  It determines how employees interact with others within and outside the organization and give them a sense of direction. Ironically, executives rarely give culture the attention it deserves, and the consequences are always detrimental. If you fail to shape your culture, the culture will shape you and your business results.

If your culture is working against your organization’s goals and objectives, you may need to change your style of doing things. One sign of a bad culture you should look out for is the tendency to assign blame . When something goes wrong, the default in blame culture for many is to point fingers. Instead of trying to understand the problem, they direct their attention to finding the culprit in an attempt to get the problem off their shoulders. However, the culture of blame only succeeds in sweeping the problem under the carpet and never at fostering accountability.

Blame And Finger Pointing Doesn't Work

Why Blame Doesn’t Work

Accountability is taking responsibility for the outcome, whether positive or negative. On the other hand, blame only takes shortcuts by closing the mind and quashing the need to understand the system better and finding the root cause.  Such narrow thinking shifts focus away from the actual problem to the individual, failing to acknowledge the role the bigger system and culture played in what happened. 

Blame culture is more about ego-pleasing and getting the weight off your shoulders (psychologically) instead of the accountability of the person being blamed. Assigning blame shifts the responsibility from yourself to others, boosting your ego. When you attribute a good outcome to your personal characteristics, you get a confidence boost. Also, by attributing a bad outcome to the failure of outside forces, you protect your self-esteem and absolve yourself.  

Blame stops learning , as people get defensive and hold onto their positions. As a consequence, both the individual and the organization do not enjoy the benefits of learning from their mistakes. In a culture of blame, people start hiding mistakes, which is even worse.  On the other hand, accountability means recognizing that anybody can err and viewing mistakes as opportunities for learning and growing.

Reducing the problem to the fault of one individual is trying to simplify a complex issue without seeing the bigger picture. This is what blame does. It focuses on the past and not on the future with the aim of punishing the offender in the hope that they will rectify their behaviour.  Conversely, accountability is forward-thinking .  It means taking responsibility for the successes and the failures and learning from the mistakes to better your results in the future.  

Blame also destroys trust and psychological safety in the workplace and makes people recoil back to their cocoons. It makes people fear their leaders and each other, creating mistrust. The fear takes away an employee’s confidence making it harder for them to take any initiative. As a result, they lack the courage to handle obstacles. Additionally, when people spend their time defending their turf and pointing fingers, they waste valuable time and hinder cooperation. 

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments. — Ed Catmull, President of Pixar

assigning blame

From Blame Culture to Accountability: How to Get There

As you must have realized by now, it is critical to creating a culture of accountability in any organization. The following are 6 steps to take your team culture from blame to accountability.

1. Create Trust and Psychological Safety

Creating a safe environment is the first step in creating trust and psychological safety. When people feel safe, trust builds, and people interact with each other without being suspicious. This interaction breeds cooperation, which is key to an organization’s success. Without trust, it is difficult to bring people together.

Employees who enjoy psychological safety in the workplace will be more open about their mistakes and more willing to learn from them. They will perform their duties and responsibilities without fear and judgment , taking the organization a step closer to achieving its objectives.

Gordon Bethune joined Continental Airlines when the company was losing hundreds of millions and successfully transformed it into a respectable leader in the airline business. He advises CEOs to take over the responsibility of creating a safe working environment for their employees. In his time at continental, Gordon always took the time to visit his employees in their crew room or the baggage room.

Every 2 weeks I share my most valuable learnings from living life fully in my Deploy Yourself Newsletter . Sign up now to download a workbook with 164 Powerful Questions which I use daily in my work and coaching. Allow these questions to transform your life and leadership.

2. Create a No-Blame, Always-Learning Policy

Focusing on the person instead of the problem shifts attention away from the real issue and prevents learning. Once you identify the culprit, the next step is usually how to deal with them. As a result, further inquiry into the problem ceases, hampering effective problem-solving. Finger-pointing denies the organization information about the reality on the ground and makes decision making impossible.

When you focus on accountability, you don’t assign blame to individuals. Instead, you view mistakes as opportunities to facilitate learning and growth and encourage constructive conversations that seek to find the root of the problem . People appreciate this and are more willing to share and discuss their mistakes and challenges in such an environment.

Akio Morita was an innovator and co-founder of Sony. When speaking about his success at the company, he highlighted communication as one important ingredient for success. One of his popular quotes reads: “I believe one of the reasons we went through such a remarkable growth period was that we had this atmosphere of free discussion.” Morita also created a culture of accountability by trusting in his employees’ ability —he believed that everyone had creative abilities.

3. Be Curious. Ask Questions To Figure Out Why The Problem Happened? 

A blame culture will tempt people to ask, “Who did it?” but a culture of accountability encourages people to find out the root of the problem by asking more important questions related to the problem.  For example, they will ask, “Why did it happen?” “What did we ignore?’’ What could we have done to prevent this?’’

You need to be constantly curious (and not jump to conclusions). Asking these questions encourages openness and inspires constructive engagement. Consequently, it spurs meaningful conversations and encourages a collective approach to addressing the problem from happening again in the future.

Accountability focuses on addressing the problem from a system’s perspective that will enable you to identify flaws in the system, which may not be obvious at first glance. When holding accountability conversations, be clear about your intentions from the onset and remember to focus on inquiry rather than an inquisition . Also, encourage everyone to accept the role they played in the system.

Pixar’s Ed Catmull attributes his company’s (Pixar) success to feedback.   The company makes films through a deeply collaborative process that hinges on productive feedback. Such feedback is based on trust and focuses on moving the project forward rather than expressing personal opinions.

A 6 Step Framework To Take Your Team Culture From Blame to Accountability

4. Build and Practice Emotional Intelligence

Anger is a natural emotional response that you have when something goes wrong or when you experience unfairness and injustice. Although it is an involuntary response, you can always listen to what it has to say, and then respond in a way you can be proud of. Otherwise, the emotion can consume you, making you do things you will later regret. For instance, anger can make you lash out at others unfairly. 

Instead of aggravating the problem, remain calm and focus your energy on addressing the problem. Always demonstrate this to set the right example for your team. It is important for them to know that assigning blame is destructive in the workplace. Coach them to deal with their anger and frustrations without blaming others. 

When conflict situations arise in the workplace, people tend to justify their behaviour and point of view while failing to consider the other person’s side of the story to escape blame. However, it is your responsibility to discourage this trend in your organization. You can achieve this goal by creating a safe environment that values empathy over blame . Always encourage your team members to listen first , and then express their concerns without holding back .

Alan Mulally exceeded expectations when he turned around Ford Motor from a company that was progressively going out of business to a giant that dominated the industry. He realized that teamwork was the only way out of the mess and led by example in appreciating everyone’s contribution. He also encouraged his team to open up about their failures and support each other.

5. Make It Better

After identifying the problem, you need to figure out what you can do to prevent it from recurring . Ask yourself what you could have done to prevent the problem? After looking inward, engage your team and work together to find what you can tweak in the processes, tools, and systems to prevent a similar problem in the future.

Sometimes problems arise due to a lack of clear expectations. Take this opportunity to communicate your expectations clearly and concisely. If your team does not fully understand their roles and responsibilities, go through them again together. You also need to review their progress constantly and provide regular feedback.

Steve Jobs, who co-founded Apple from his mother’s garage, faced an ouster in 1985. When he came back to Apple in 1997, the company was struggling to survive, and its stock prices had taken a dip. Instead of blaming others for his exit, he used his unique vision and ideas to turn the company around. By the time he died, Apple’s stocks had increased by more than 9,000%.

6. As a Leader, Take Responsibility for Your Team’s Actions

A good leader will accept blame when things go wrong and pass along the credit when things go right. When others face problems, they will learn by using each mistake as an opportunity. Before pointing fingers, they will ask themselves what they could have done differently.   If someone slips up, they will offer their support and create a more robust system. Instead of throwing people under the bus, they realize that everyone is human and can make a mistake.

As a leader, the buck stops with you. If you lead by example , you can encourage your team not to fear mistakes but to view them as opportunities to learn and grow. You will also inspire them to emulate your actions, which will include taking responsibility for their mistakes. But if you are constantly pointing fingers, you will lose their trust and respect.  You have to lead by example.  

Blame Statements

When blame is prevalent in your team culture, you will hear people make statements (either out loud or to themselves) like the below:

  • Who did this? This is wrong and should not have happened. Let’s find out who did it.
  • This is completely wrong. You should not have done this.
  • This is your fault and there will be consequences.
  • I made a mistake but I won’t say anything and try to hide it, otherwise, I might face repercussions .

Accountability Statements

When your team culture is one of accountability, you will hear people say:

  • How can we make sure that this kind of mistake doesn’t happen again? What processes/systems can be changed?
  • What can we learn from this situation?
  • What was really the cause of this? Do we know the root cause? How do we plan to fix the problem?
  • I made this mistake. I want to share with everyone so that no one makes this mistake and can learn from my experience.

Blame culture creates divisions and separates people and teams. It also causes mistrust between employees and creates an environment of fear . Consequently, it makes it harder for the organization to achieve its goals. Fear also paralyzes workers, making them reluctant to take new initiatives.

Accountability culture brings everyone together as part of a bigger whole. I t encourages people to take blows for each other as comrades and friends rather than as competitors .  Since it addresses mistakes from a systems point of view, identifying flaws and rectifying them becomes easier.

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  • The Infinite Game (2019) by Simon Sinek | | Deploy Yourself - by Sumit Gupta - […] a culture of trust, where the company is aligned with profits rather than its people, unethical business practices […]
  • 8 Leadership Traits, Skills & Qualities for Effective Leaders | Deploy Yourself - by Sumit Gupta - […] The best thing about taking responsibility is that it empowers you. Instead of feeling like a victim, you take…

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Example sentences assign blame

The first years of opposition could be wasted in a war to assign blame .
It's always difficult to assign blame when a marriage breaks down.
Then, if feeling defensive, she'll look to assign blame and you'll be the closest target.
While leaving open the possibility that there was 'unlawful interference' in the cockpit, the investigation did not assign blame .
In his correspondence and public statements, he was careful not to assign blame or cause embarrassment to colleagues in government.

Definition of 'assign' assign

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Definition of 'blame' blame

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  • January 8 2023

Assigning blame

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Trump says Navalny was 'brave,' but should not have returned to Russia

People demonstrate following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, in Warsaw

Reporting by Gram Slattery; editing by Deepa Babington and Leslie Adler

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Trump says Navalny was 'brave,' but should not have returned to Russia

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By Gram Slattery

GREENVILLE, South Carolina (Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Alexei Navalny was "a very brave man" who probably should not have returned to Russia, without assigning any blame for the Russian opposition leader's unexpected death.

Democratic President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny's death, as has Nikki Haley , who trails far behind Trump as his sole remaining rival for the Republican presidential nomination.

"Navalny is a very sad situation, and he is a very brave, he was a very brave guy because he went back. He could have stayed away," Trump said during a town hall interview with Fox News in South Carolina.

"And, frankly, he probably would have been a lot better off staying away and talking from outside of the country as opposed to having to go back in, because people thought that could happen and it did happen. And it's a horrible thing," he said.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in Navalny's death and said Western claims that Putin was responsible are unacceptable.

Trump - who has expressed admiration for Putin both during his 2017-2021 White House tenure and afterward - continued to compare himself to Navalny, implying that they both had faced politically motivated prosecutions.

"But it's happening in our country too," Trump said. "We are turning into a communist country in many ways. And if you look at it - I'm the leading candidate. I get indicted."

On Sunday, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that Navalny's death in an Arctic penal colony last week had made him "more aware of what is happening" in the United States. Trump did not elaborate, but he has frequently dismissed the 91 criminal charges against him as politically motivated, a claim prosecutors deny.

Biden on Tuesday issued a blistering critique of Trump's Truth Social post on Navalny's death, saying, "Why does Trump always blame America? Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. Why can't Trump just say that?"

During the Fox News town hall, which was conducted before a live audience in Greenville four days before the state's primary contest, Trump continued to blast migrants, portraying them as a threat to public safety without offering any evidence to support his claims that they are more violent than native-born Americans.

At several moments, 77-year-old Trump's answers to questions veered into tangential topics.

While being asked about electric vehicles and Americans' "freedom of movement," Trump spoke about the usefulness of tariffs and described his interactions with an unnamed American dishwasher company during his time in office.

Trump praised South Carolina U.S. Senator Tim Scott, who joined Trump on stage for the final part of the interview. The former president has privately asked associates about naming Scott, a one-time rival in the Republican nomination battle, as his running mate, sources familiar with the matter have previously said.

Tying himself to Scott may have short-term electoral benefits for the former president in the South Carolina primary, as voters choose who they want as the Republican nominee to take on Biden in the Nov. 5 election.

Trump is leading Haley, a former South Carolina governor and former ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, by more than 30 percentage points in South Carolina, according to most polls, and his team is eager to deliver a crushing blow. However, Haley has said there is no way she will drop out and that she plans to keep campaigning into March.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery; editing by Deepa Babington and Leslie Adler)

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Google has apologized (or come very close to apologizing) for another embarrassing AI blunder this week, an image-generating model that injected diversity into pictures with a farcical disregard for historical context. While the underlying issue is perfectly understandable, Google blames the model for "becoming" oversensitive. The AI system in question is Gemini, the company's flagship conversational AI platform, which when asked calls out to a version of the Imagen 2 model to create images on demand. This embarrassing and easily replicated issue was quickly lampooned by commentators online.

How will Alabama's embryo ruling impact IVF? Here are 6 key questions raised by the decision.

Following the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling that frozen embryos are considered “children” under state law, here are six key questions that remain about the implications of the decision.

As Techstars retools, some former staffers say it lost focus on what made it successful

The upcoming closure of its Boulder and Seattle accelerators comes after the group decided to hit pause on its Austin-based program, an event that TechCrunch reported on in late 2023. Given its extensive global footprint and lengthy history of investing in early-stage startups, changes to how Techstars operates will impact founders, and local venture ecosystems around the world. In the wake of Techstars decision to pull back from certain markets, former Techstars Seattle managing director Chris DeVore penned a lengthy note criticizing the group’s strategic choices, including centralizing its fundraising efforts, and building programs with corporate sponsors as financial anchors.

Cleats from Jackie Robinson statue will be donated to Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

The cleats are expected to arrive at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum on April 11.

This week in Bidenomics: Dow 40,000?

The stock market is booming, and President Biden has started to brag a little. Expect him to get bolder.

Pursuit of justice for Harmony Montgomery won’t end with her father’s murder prosecution

Attorneys have been laying the groundwork for civil litigation to seek accountability for those who failed to protect the vulnerable young girl, whose disappearance went largely unnoticed for two years.

Crystal Renee Sorey, the mother of Harmony Montgomery, shown here in February 2022, alerted authorities in late 2021 that her daughter was missing. The girl's father was charged with her murder. Sorey is pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — The jury’s finding that Adam Montgomery is guilty of second-degree murder for the death of his daughter, Harmony Montgomery , won’t be the final word in efforts to seek justice for the 5-year-old’s death.

While prosecutors sought accountability through the criminal justice system , attorneys for the girl’s mother, Crystal Renee Sorey, laid groundwork for further litigation through the civil justice system as well.

Sorey, 33, confirmed in a court filing late last month she is pursuing a wrongful death claim on her daughter’s behalf. She asked a probate judge to name her the administrator of Harmony’s estate, so she can move forward with the potential lawsuit. A hearing on the probate matter is slated for March 11.

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The filing doesn’t specify which people or government entities would be named as defendants. Child welfare agencies in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts were involved in Harmony’s case, so the civil litigation would not necessarily be limited to one state.

Sorey, who testified in Adam Montgomery’s trial and has watched tearfully throughout much of the proceeding, declined to comment. One of her attorneys, Cyrus F. Rilee III, said he is representing Sorey in her civil claims against the state of New Hampshire.

“I will have no comment about this matter until the prosecution of Adam Montgomery is concluded,” Rilee told The Boston Globe last week, “and I ask that the media please respect Crystal Sorey’s privacy during this difficult time.”

Sorey lost custody of Harmony in 2018 as she struggled with substance abuse issues. She pushed for the girl to remain with a foster family while she sought to regain custody, but a Massachusetts judge awarded custody to Adam Montgomery in February 2019 despite his violent criminal history .

Sorey has said the girl’s father cut off contact in 2019. Her efforts to find her daughter grew frantic in late 2021, when she turned to Manchester police and the mayor’s office , triggering an investigation that led to Adam Montgomery’s arrest .

While the search for Harmony continued in January 2022, Sorey told the Globe at a candlelight vigil in Manchester that she was angry at officials in both states.

“I have a lot of hostility to a lot of people that failed my daughter. And I’m included,” she said. “I’m always going to own the fact that I played my part on this. But I never gave up on her. ”

Crystal Renee Sorey is surrounded by family and friends during a vigil held for her daughter, Harmony Montgomery, on Feb. 12, 2022, in Manchester, N.H., when authorities were searching for the girl who was last seen in 2019.

The revelation that Harmony’s disappearance went largely unnoticed by authorities in both states for two years sparked public outrage and calls for better coordination .

New Hampshire Governor Christopher T. Sununu sharply criticized the Massachusetts courts in January 2022 for the decision to place Harmony with her father, a “ monstrous drug dealer ” with a violent criminal record. Sununu’s office released a seven-page report in February 2022 with a more measured evaluation of the communication breakdown.

The report acknowledged a child welfare worker in New Hampshire made contact with Adam Montgomery three times in 2020 and 2021, based on a referral. At least twice, the worker asked specifically about Harmony’s whereabouts , and Adam Montgomery claimed he had returned the girl to her mother. The worker left a voicemail for Sorey in January 2020. The message went unreturned, and there is no evidence that any additional attempts were made to contact her, according to the report.

The Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate released a 100-page report in May 2022, acknowledging that the state’s child welfare system overlooked Harmony’s needs at every turn.

“The system failed Harmony,” Maria Mossaides, director of the Office of the Child Advocate, said at a news conference in Boston about the report.

New Hampshire Child Advocate Cassandra Sanchez said on Wednesday that her office conducted a review in fall 2022 and forwarded recommendations to the relevant officials. That report focused on systemic improvements, not assigning blame, and it is not public, she said.

Manchester police provided this photo of Harmony Montgomery while they were searching for her in January 2022.

This story was updated after a jury returned its guilty verdict Thursday afternoon. This report includes material from previous Globe stories.

Steven Porter can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @reporterporter .

Ryan Martin Ph.D.

Forgiveness

Finding someone to blame, what do we do when there is no obvious culprit.

Posted December 7, 2020 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

One of the things we do when we get angry is assign blame. When something negative happens to us, we make a decision about who is responsible and why they did what they did. In fact, misattributing causation is associated with anger .

How, though, do we handle things when there is no obvious culprit? What do we do when there’s really no one to blame (i.e., bad weather, illness)? Or, what if we’re the ones to blame?

As a quick refresher, the chronically angry have a tendency to assign blame incorrectly. They might literally blame the wrong person for something or they might blame the right person but misattribute why it happened (“they did this on purpose” instead of “this was a simple mistake”).

Imagine how this might play out in the following circumstances.

  • You are driving to a job interview and there is terrible weather that has traffic backed up considerably.
  • You and your significant other are having a difficult time getting pregnant .
  • You are on your way to the airport for an international flight and you can’t find your passport.

In each of these cases, we see a situation without an obvious culprit (or, in the case of the last one, we see a situation where you might actually be the culprit for misplacing your own passport). What do you do? It’s harder to be mad when there’s no clearly responsible party ( part of the appraisal process is deciding if the provocation was deliberate, blameworthy, and punishable ). Who do you blame?

We often see a variety of semi-irrational thoughts in these cases. Weather-induced traffic gets blamed on poor city planning, climate change , or even God. Infertility gets blamed on poor health habits or an inability to relax. The lost passport gets blamed on the passport, instead of the person who misplaced it (“where did that passport go” instead of “where did I put that passport”).

I describe them as semi-irrational because there’s a tiny bit of truth to most of them (maybe not the passport). Climate change is causing more catastrophic weather conditions and our infrastructure isn’t prepared for it. Health habits and stress do exacerbate infertility. These things are a little bit relevant (as part of a much larger puzzle of causes). That’s why we can so easily shift responsibility to them in our minds without realizing that we’re fooling ourselves.

What should we do in these circumstances? First, it’s okay to acknowledge that sometimes bad things happen without a particular responsible party. Second, try to adjust your focus from finding the offender to finding the solution. Part of the reason we look for the offender is that we don’t like it when things feel out of control. Focusing on a solution is a way of taking back some of that control.

Ryan Martin Ph.D.

Ryan Martin, Ph.D., is an anger researcher and a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

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Biden faults Trump’s vaccine rollout as he cites total covid death toll

assigning blame

“He [President Donald Trump] did not move on making sure that we dealt with vaccinating the American public. We ended up losing over a million people dead — a million people.”

— President Biden , during a speech to a conference of the National Association of Counties , Feb. 12

“We vaccinated America. People were dying. We lost over 1,200,000 people because of the slow start in all this process.”

— Biden, during a fundraiser in Henderson, Nev ., Feb. 4

“You know, I think we underestimate the impact that the failure to respond to the covid crisis quickly enough had on the psyche of the American people. … You had over a million people dying — a million people dying, and we had trouble at the front end of realizing there wasn’t much done to deal with it. And we ramped up rapidly, vaccinations and the like.”

— Biden, speaking to reporters , Jan. 12

“We vaccinated America to get through that pandemic. Less than 2 million people were vaccinated when we came into office. Today, 270 million Americans have gotten that coronavirus vaccine.”

— Biden, during a fundraising event in Jupiter, Fla., Jan. 30

After President Biden took office, he would often misleadingly claim that the Trump administration had vaccinated relatively few Americans during the coronavirus pandemic compared to the Biden administration. But this was inaccurate framing.

When Biden became president, vaccinations had been available for a little over a month. Health-care workers, residents of long-term care facilities, front-line essential workers and people over the age of 75 were first in line. By the time Biden took office, on Jan. 20, 2021, with a stated goal of reaching 1 million vaccinations a day , shots had reached a seven-day average of more than 1 million a day — and 19 million people had been vaccinated, 10 times the number Biden used last month.

In recent weeks, Biden has expanded this long-standing talking point to include the total number of dead from the pandemic. To some ears, he seems to be blaming Trump for the total covid death toll. The New York Post editorial page called it a “vile lie,” and some readers complained to The Fact Checker. But Biden’s phrasing is sufficiently subtle that a link is not so easily established. A White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity said Biden was not trying to blame Trump for the deaths and said that his comments reflected reporting that criticized Trump’s vaccine rollout effort and noted Biden’s pledge to ramp up shots.

Trump can certainly be faulted for a chaotic, nonscientific approach to the pandemic. Two of our colleagues wrote an excellent best-selling book, “ Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History ,” that detailed many missteps, including a failure to take the pandemic seriously from the start, inconsistent messaging on shutdowns and distancing, and a shunning of masks. But his administration’s successful push for a vaccine in less than a year, dubbed Operation Warp Speed, is considered a success story.

In February 2020, as the pandemic appeared to be headed our way, Anthony S. Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters that a vaccine “would not be applicable to the epidemic unless we really wait about a year to a year and a half.” But in the end an effective vaccine was approved by November, just eight months later. By Dec. 8, the first vaccines outside a trial were given to people.

At that point, 300,000 people in the United States had died of covid. The vaccines do not prevent people from getting covid but they significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.

As regular readers know, we generally avoid compiling data by presidential term, as broad economic, crime or medical trends are often beyond a president’s control. The worst month for covid deaths in the United States was January 2021 — 105,565, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — and Biden was president for 10 days of that month. As there are not precise day-to-day death counts, we will assign one-third of the death toll that month to Biden’s term.

Nearly 1.2 million people have died of covid in the United States, according to the CDC . This is the death toll by year since the pandemic emerged in full force in March 2020.

  • 2020: 385,666
  • 2021: 463,262
  • 2022: 246,161
  • 2023: 72,827
  • 2024: 10,611 (to date)

By presidential term, that means:

  • Trump: 465,043 (39 percent)
  • Biden: 713,484 (61 percent)

But notice how Biden frames this:

  • “He [Trump] did not move on making sure that we dealt with vaccinating the American public. We ended up losing over a million people dead — a million people.”
  • “ We lost over 1,200,000 people because of the slow start in all this process.”
  • “You had over a million people dying — a million people dying, and we had trouble at the front end of realizing there wasn’t much done to deal with it.”

As we noted, the vaccine was created in record time — a fact that Biden at times has credited to Trump. “Thanks to the prior administration and our scientific community, America was one of the first countries to get the vaccine,” he said in 2021 .

But now when he mentions Trump and vaccines, he also references the total dead, even though Trump has been out of office for three years.

With some justification , the Biden team can claim the Trump administration did not leave behind much of a national strategy beyond vaccinating health-care workers and people living in long-term care facilities, both of whom were at fixed sites where they could receive vaccines. Trump more than 20 times promised 100 million doses would be delivered by the end of 2020 — a goal his administration badly failed to meet.

The Biden administration came up with ways to provide states with resources to deliver vaccines — which Trump had resisted — and to prevent states from hoarding doses. The new administration also fleshed out details of a national plan that had remained vague under Trump.

For instance, the Trump administration had announced a plan to vaccinate people through pharmacies. When Biden officials asked pharmacy officials about how it would work, pharmacy executives responded that they knew little beyond what was in the initial news release. The Biden administration then developed a plan to distribute the vaccines through 40,000 pharmacies.

Fauci, who stayed on with the Biden administration, on Feb. 16, 2021, told CNN that the Trump vaccine distribution program “was not a well-coordinated plan. Getting the vaccines made, getting them shipped through Operation Warp Speed was okay.” But, now, he said the Biden administration was “actually getting these doses into people. That is something that we had to get much better organized now with getting the community vaccine centers, getting the pharmacies involved, getting mobile units involved.”

The Biden team had success, but the death toll kept rising, in part because a limited supply of vaccine ( as a result of a Trump administration decision ) meant a prioritized rollout was necessary. By March 4, 2021, 100 million doses had been delivered, the CDC data shows. (Total deaths: 545,000.) The seven-day moving average reached 3.5 million a day by April 12. (Total deaths: 570,000.) Within a year of Biden taking office, about 250 million people had received at least one dose. (Total deaths: 905,000.)

But then the effort stalled as more people refused to get vaccinated. Less than 70 percent of the U.S. population completed the primary series of shots, the CDC says , among the lowest results in the United States peer group of industrialized nations. The takeup of the bivalent booster dose was worse — 17 percent. A study published this week in Nature said political affiliation, “defined by voting rates for Donald Trump in the 2020 election,” was the strongest variable that affected coronavirus vaccine uptake.

The White House official who said Biden was not trying to blame Trump for the deaths supplied articles reporting that the Trump administration in 2020 lacked a plan to combat vaccine hesitancy and misinformation . The official said the importance of early vaccination was underscored by a 2023 study in the European Journal of Epidemiology that estimated 232,000 deaths among unvaccinated adults in the United States could have been prevented from May 30, 2021, to Sept. 3, 2022, if they had been vaccinated.

The federal government, of course, was only one part of a nationwide effort to distribute coronavirus vaccines. States played an important role in distributing vaccines and encouraging people to take them, with most states falling below the national average for being fully vaccinated, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University .

Trump, who became seriously ill with covid during his presidency after rarely wearing a mask, has remained proud of the vaccine even though his right-wing base turned skeptical and dismissive of the achievement.

“The vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind,” he said in 2022 . “The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t do the vaccine, but it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you’re protected, the results of the vaccine are good.”

Trump made the remarks after he was booed by an audience for revealing he had received a booster shot. A campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Bottom Line

Biden leans too heavily into suggesting the U.S. death toll is so high because Trump did not leave behind a fully formed national vaccine plan. After all, Trump did leave behind a vaccine, against expectations when the pandemic started.

Even with a successful vaccine rollout steered by the Biden administration, more people in the United States have died of covid under Biden than Trump. Whatever “slow start” Biden inherited from Trump was quickly overcome — though vaccine skepticism on the right led many Americans to shun the vaccine.

By mentioning the covid death toll in the same breath as denouncing Trump’s vaccine distribution, Biden seems to be subtly connecting the two — while avoiding any blame for deaths that occurred on his watch.

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assigning blame

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  1. The Most Important Thing Is Assigning Blame

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  2. Isaac Marion Quote: “We don’t care about assigning blame for the human

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  3. Assigning blame is a waste of time.

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  4. Mason Cooley Quote: “Many think that assigning blame settles matters.”

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  5. Concern yourself more with accepting responsibility than with assigning

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COMMENTS

  1. A Culture Obsessed With Blame

    Blame is the act of assigning responsibility but not the same as taking responsibility. Blaming others fixes nothing and makes them feel bad. It is destructive to relationships and alienating. Learn how to address the problem and make effective corrections, not to assign blame.

  2. Assigning Blame

    Richard B. Joelson, DSW, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City who has been an administrator, educator, and author in the field of mental health for many years. Get the ...

  3. Blame Game: Definition, Signs, Impact, and Prevention

    The blame game is a cycle of passing the buck and avoiding responsibility when something goes wrong. It can create tension, damage relationships, and hurt individuals and organizations. Learn the reasons, signs, impact, and prevention of the blame game from a clinical psychologist.

  4. 5 Reasons We Play the Blame Game

    Blame is a defense mechanism, a tool for conflict resolution, and a way to avoid self-esteem issues. It can also be illogical, distorted, and harmful. Learn how to stop playing the blame game and accept responsibility for your actions.

  5. Blame: Definition, Examples, & Types

    Blame is a psychological phenomenon that involves evaluating behavior as morally or socially wrong and assigning responsibility for a negative outcome. Learn how to blame less, the difference between blame and responsibility, and the role of control in blaming. See examples of blame shifting and how to avoid it.

  6. How the psychology of blame can explain

    Blame is a common strategy to escape responsibility and solidify social identity, but it can also hurt the international COVID-19 response and prepare society for a post-COVID world. This article explains how people's social identity affects their blame allocation and how group-level blame affects their responses to the pandemic.

  7. (PDF) A Theory of Blame

    the crucial role of agent causality in assigning blame (Cushman, 2008; Lagnado & Channon, 2008) and for. social perceivers from age 5 on (Shultz, Wright, & Schleifer, 1986).

  8. The Limits of Blame: Rethinking Punishment and Responsibility

    Kelly also cautions that we cannot properly assign blame without assessing an agent's motives, but she observes that. It is true that motive is sometimes introduced in the sentencing phase of a criminal trial, although more often as an aggravating than a mitigating consideration. Evidence of cruel or greedy motives can serve to increase the ...

  9. ASSIGN BLAME

    Learn how to use the phrase "assign blame" in a sentence and what it means. Find out the difference between assigning blame and assigning the blame, and see related words and phrases.

  10. 5 Psychological Reasons For Blaming Others (+ How To Stop It)

    3. It's a great defense mechanism. Shifting the blame directly onto someone or something else is the perfect way to avoid having to reflect on your behavior or delve deeply into your own psyche. That way you can remain blissfully unaware of your own shortcomings, which can help to maintain a fragile ego. 4.

  11. Emotional Competency

    Definitions Assigning responsibility for a loss. Disposing of grief. Disposing of your loss. Related Terms The terms: accuse, answer for, charge, hold responsible, incriminate, indict, fault, take the fall, and find guilty are synonyms for blame. We blame others to dispose of problems and protect our sense of self-worth when things go bad.

  12. Blame Culture Is Toxic. Here's How to Stop It.

    Summary. At work, we show kindness by doing things like paying someone a compliment with no ulterior motive or holding the door open for a colleague. Now think about the rare occasions when we're...

  13. Blame: What does it look like? : Nursing Management

    In Brief Blame is out; accountability is in. Learn how to distinguish between the two through the application of a medication error case study. Figure Blame is out; accountability is in. But it's easy to confuse blame with accountability. The following article describes how to distinguish between the two to avoid blame.

  14. How to Break the Cycle of Blame in Your Relationship

    A blame cycle in a relationship can occur whenever we aren't properly focused on taking responsibility over our own actions. When problems arise, the blame cycle may render them unsolvable because the blamer doesn't accept their part in the conflict. Additionally, the person being blamed is unlikely to behave and communicate in the manner they ...

  15. From Blame Culture to Accountability

    Assigning blame shifts the responsibility from yourself to others, boosting your ego. When you attribute a good outcome to your personal characteristics, you get a confidence boost. Also, by attributing a bad outcome to the failure of outside forces, you protect your self-esteem and absolve yourself.

  16. 4 Steps to Stop Blaming

    Blaming is a habit that blocks your personal growth, damages your relationships, and gets in the way of your own well-being. Learn how to stop blaming and invite a monkey to tea with Nancy Colier LCSW, Rev. and her clients.

  17. Conflict Resolution Resources

    Assigning blame allows the blamer to avoid taking any responsibility for their own actions while contending the conflict is entirely the responsibility of the other person. However, conflict is rarely generated by one person, alone. Blame does not change the argument or the facts of the situation. What it may do instead is put your colleague ...

  18. ASSIGN BLAME definition and meaning

    Definition of 'assign' assign (əsaɪn ) verb If you assign a piece of work to someone, you give them the work to do. [...] See full entry for 'assign' Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Definition of 'blame' blame (bleɪm ) uncountable noun

  19. ASSIGN, BLAME Crossword Clue

    The Crossword Solver found 30 answers to "ASSIGN, BLAME", 3 letters crossword clue. The Crossword Solver finds answers to classic crosswords and cryptic crossword puzzles. Enter the length or pattern for better results. Click the answer to find similar crossword clues . Enter a Crossword Clue Sort by Length # of Letters or Pattern Dictionary

  20. Blame vs Accuse: The Main Differences And When To Use Them

    Blame is a verb that refers to holding someone responsible for a fault or mistake. It is a negative action that is often associated with pointing fingers and assigning guilt. Blame can be used in various contexts, such as personal relationships, workplace environments, or legal proceedings. It can result in feelings of shame, anger, or resentment.

  21. Assigning blame 7 Little Words Bonus 3

    Possible Solution: ACCUSATORY Since you already solved the clue Assigning blame which had the answer ACCUSATORY, you can simply go back at the main post to check the other daily crossword clues. You can do so by clicking the link here 7 Little Words Bonus 3 January 8 2023 Related Clues <- Previous Level All January 8 2023 answers Next Level ->

  22. Trump says Navalny was 'brave,' but should not have returned to Russia

    Former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Alexei Navalny was "a very brave man" who probably should not have returned to Russia, without assigning any blame for the Russian ...

  23. Shame and the Pendulum of Blame

    The author explains how shame and blaming are related emotions that can be influenced by the brain, the interpreter modules, and the moral elephant. She discusses the difference between guilt and shame, and how to manage the impulses to assign blame or hide from others. She also refers to the Genesis story as a metaphor for the human tendency to blame others for our own shortcomings.

  24. Trump says Navalny was 'brave,' but should not have returned to Russia

    GREENVILLE, South Carolina (Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Alexei Navalny was "a very brave man" who probably should not have returned to Russia, without assigning any blame for the Russian opposition leader's unexpected death. Democratic President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny's death, as has ...

  25. Mother of Harmony Montgomery pursuing wrongful death lawsuit

    That report focused on systemic improvements, not assigning blame, and it is not public, she said. Manchester police provided this photo of Harmony Montgomery while they were searching for her in ...

  26. Finding Someone to Blame

    One of the things we do when we get angry is assign blame. When something negative happens to us, we make a decision about who is responsible and why they did what they did. In fact,...

  27. Biden faults Trump's vaccine rollout as he cites total covid death toll

    As there are not precise day-to-day death counts, we will assign one-third of the death toll that month to Biden's term. Nearly 1.2 million people have died of covid in the United States ...

  28. Navalny should not have returned to Russia

    Former US president Donald Trump has said that Alexei Navalny was "a very brave man" who probably should not have returned to Russia, without assigning any blame for the Russian opposition leader ...