The Blame Intensity Inventory: Assessing the Propensity to Blame Harshly and Its Unique Capacity to Predict Malicious Satisfaction from Offender Victimization

Blame permeates our social lives. When done properly, blame can facilitate the upholding of moral norms. When done with excessive harshness, however, blame can have significant negative impacts. Here, we develop and validate a scale—the Blame Intensity Inventory—to measure individual differences in the propensity for harsh blame responses. First, we present evidence for its unifactorial structure and test-retest reliability. Then, we present evidence for its convergent and divergent validity by examining relations with existing scales. Finally, across three experiments we show that Blame Intensity uniquely predicts—controlling for other predictors—an important phenomenon: Malicious satisfaction, or gratification upon learning that an offender has been brutally victimized. Results are discussed in terms of important research questions that could be addressed using the Blame Intensity Inventory.