Did God cause the oil spill?

The participants had to guess whether their partner – the one dishing out the cash – was a human or a computer. In the majority of cases where people lost money, they were much more likely to blame their bad luck on another human.

Why is blame our default setting? Morewedge said there could be several reasons, but a big one is that unexpected events are difficult to predict. And unpredictable things can be scary. That’s why it can feel safer to assume that negative events are due to some external thing so you can avoid being harmed again. Morewedge said more awareness of this phenomenon could lead to better human relations.