Assigning vicarious responsibility

An experiment tested three hypotheses about the conditions under which someone can be held vicariously responsible for the actions of another. Two of the hypotheses received empirical support: that the vicariously responsible person is in a superior relationship to the person who caused the damage and is able to control that person's causing of the damage. A third hypotheis, that a person is held vicariously responsible because of a relatively greater ability to pay compensation to the victim, was not supported.