Originally Posted by
redietz
Our culture overestimates the influence of "personal responsibility" in almost every area. It overestimates the control people have of their own behavior. It underestimates the effects of context. It underestimates the responsibility of social scenarios in influencing human behavior.
Those aren't platitudes. Go grab a thousand professional journals in sociology, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, neurosciences, behavioral science, and so on. The studies will run heavily (as in 80-90%) in the directions I've mentioned. Personal control of situations (and therefore personal responsibility, whatever that is) is vastly overestimated by people. Assignations of responsibility are skewed. Context determines behavior much, much more than people in this culture realize or are willing to concede.
People prefer to believe they have more control than they do. That's clear and it's striking.