Indianapolis Colts coach and now an NBC commentator, remarked: “It should’ve been a sack. And, I’d never noticed this before, but if you watch Mike Carey, he almost blows the whistle.… With the game on the line, Mike gives the QB a chance to make a play in a Super Bowl.… I think in a regular season game he probably makes the call.” * In other words, atleast according to Dungy, the most famous play in Super Bowl history might never have happened if the official had followed the rule book to the letter and made the call he would have made during the regular season.
It might have been a correct call. It might have been an incorrect call. But was it the
wrong
call? It sure didn’t come off that way. Carey was not chided for “situational ethics” or “selective officiating” or “swallowing the whistle.” Quite the contrary. He was widely hailed for his restraint, so much so that he was given a grade of A+ by his superiors. In the aftermath of the game, he appeared on talk shows and was even permitted by the NFL to grant interviews—including one to us as well as one to
Playboy
—about the play, a rarity for officials in most major sports leagues. It’s hard to recall the NFL reacting more favorably to a single piece of officiating.
If this is surprising, it shouldn’t be. It conforms to a sort of default mode of human behavior. People view acts of
omission
—the absence of an act—as far less intrusive or harmful than acts of
commission
—the committing of an act—even if the outcomes are the same or worse. Psychologists call this
omission bias
, and it expresses itself in a broad range of contexts.
In a well-known psychological experiment, the subjects were posed the following question: Imagine there have been several epidemics of a certain kind of flu that everyone contracts and that can be fatal to children under three years of age. About 10 out of every 10,000 children with this flu will die from it. A vaccine for the flu, which eliminates the chance of getting it, causes death in 5 out of every 10,000 children. Would you vaccinate your child?
On its face, it seems an easy call, right? You’d choose to do it because not vaccinating has twice the mortality rate as thevaccination. However, most parents in the survey opted
not
to vaccinate their children. Why? Because it
caused
5 deaths per 10,000; never mind that without the vaccine, their children facedtwice the risk of death from the flu. Those who would not permit vaccinations indicated that they would “feel responsible if anything happened because of [the] vaccine.” The same parents tended to dismiss the notion that they would “feel responsible if anything had happened because I failed to vaccinate.” In other words, many parents felt more responsible for a bad outcome if it followed their own actions than if it simply resulted from lack of action.
In other studies, subjects consistently view various actions
taken
as less moral than actions not taken—even when the results are the same or worse. Subjects, for instance, were asked to assess the following situation: John, a tennis player, has to face a tough opponent tomorrow in a decisive match. John knows his opponent is allergic to a particular food. In the first scenario, John recommends the food containing the allergen to hurt his unknowing opponent’s performance. In the second, the opponent mistakenly orders the allergenic food, and John, knowing his opponent might get sick, says nothing. A majority of people judged that John’s
action
of recommending the allergenic food was far more immoral than John’s
inaction
of not informing the opponent of the allergenic substance. But are they really different?
Think about how we act in our daily lives. Most of us probably would contend that telling a direct lie is worse than withholding the truth. Missing the opportunity to pick the right spouse is bad but not nearly as bad as actively choosing the wrong one. Declining to eat
It might have been a correct call. It might have been an incorrect call. But was it the
wrong
call? It sure didn’t come off that way. Carey was not chided for “situational ethics” or “selective officiating” or “swallowing the whistle.” Quite the contrary. He was widely hailed for his restraint, so much so that he was given a grade of A+ by his superiors. In the aftermath of the game, he appeared on talk shows and was even permitted by the NFL to grant interviews—including one to us as well as one to
Playboy
—about the play, a rarity for officials in most major sports leagues. It’s hard to recall the NFL reacting more favorably to a single piece of officiating.
If this is surprising, it shouldn’t be. It conforms to a sort of default mode of human behavior. People view acts of
omission
—the absence of an act—as far less intrusive or harmful than acts of
commission
—the committing of an act—even if the outcomes are the same or worse. Psychologists call this
omission bias
, and it expresses itself in a broad range of contexts.
In a well-known psychological experiment, the subjects were posed the following question: Imagine there have been several epidemics of a certain kind of flu that everyone contracts and that can be fatal to children under three years of age. About 10 out of every 10,000 children with this flu will die from it. A vaccine for the flu, which eliminates the chance of getting it, causes death in 5 out of every 10,000 children. Would you vaccinate your child?
On its face, it seems an easy call, right? You’d choose to do it because not vaccinating has twice the mortality rate as thevaccination. However, most parents in the survey opted
not
to vaccinate their children. Why? Because it
caused
5 deaths per 10,000; never mind that without the vaccine, their children facedtwice the risk of death from the flu. Those who would not permit vaccinations indicated that they would “feel responsible if anything happened because of [the] vaccine.” The same parents tended to dismiss the notion that they would “feel responsible if anything had happened because I failed to vaccinate.” In other words, many parents felt more responsible for a bad outcome if it followed their own actions than if it simply resulted from lack of action.
In other studies, subjects consistently view various actions
taken
as less moral than actions not taken—even when the results are the same or worse. Subjects, for instance, were asked to assess the following situation: John, a tennis player, has to face a tough opponent tomorrow in a decisive match. John knows his opponent is allergic to a particular food. In the first scenario, John recommends the food containing the allergen to hurt his unknowing opponent’s performance. In the second, the opponent mistakenly orders the allergenic food, and John, knowing his opponent might get sick, says nothing. A majority of people judged that John’s
action
of recommending the allergenic food was far more immoral than John’s
inaction
of not informing the opponent of the allergenic substance. But are they really different?
Think about how we act in our daily lives. Most of us probably would contend that telling a direct lie is worse than withholding the truth. Missing the opportunity to pick the right spouse is bad but not nearly as bad as actively choosing the wrong one. Declining to eat