Attitudes Toward Corporate Responsibility: A Psycholegal Perspective

This article examines psycholegal aspects of corporate responsibility for wrongdoing, focusing in particular on public attitudes toward the responsibilities of corporations for harm caused by the corporations. The article draws on psychological theory and method to study the factors that lead people to hold corporations culpable for harms. One aim of the article is to begin to develop a systematic account of such judgment processes. Other purposes are to demonstrate the advances in knowledge about corporate wrongdoing that could be gained by incorporating psycholegal research and theory, and to draw the attention of psycholegal scholars to this fertile and inreasingly important area of study. I. Introduction II. Cases Involving Businesses and Corporations: An Increasing Part of the Legal Landscape III. The Importance of Public Opinion about Corporate Wrongdoing IV. Sources of Distinctive Responses to Corporate Wrongdoing ... A. Attitudes Toward Businesses and Corporations ... B. Distinctive Features of Businesses and Corporations … 1. Individuals Versus Corporations ... 2. Differences among Businesses and Corporations ... C. Attitudes Toward Personal Versus Social Responsibility ... D. Judgments of Responsibility within Group Contexts … E. Toward a Model of Judgments of Corporate Responsibility V. Conclusion ... A. Unanswered Questions about Judgments of Corporate Responsibility ... B. New Directions for Psycholegal Research VI. Appendi