Why the blame game is an important social tool

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There is a lot of blame flying around. Individuals blame the NSW government for making their lockdown too tight or not tight enough. Victoria blames NSW for the latest COVID outbreak developing in Melbourne. The NSW government blames the federal government for the vaccine rollout. The federal government blames the advice it received from health experts. And Twitter, as always, blames everyone at once.

But what good is all this blame? What are we trying to get at?

Victoria accuses NSW governments of dealing with COVID to get the state on lockdown again.Credit: James Brickwood

It is tempting to think about identifying who is at fault. But it is not enough otherwise, once we have made the identification, there is no point in continuing to blame. It wouldn’t add anything.

It’s also tempting to think that we would all be better off without this blame, and instead focused our attention on collaboration. But getting rid of the blame risks removing a valuable social tool.

Blame, when used correctly, has a few important purposes. These are visible in all of the examples above, although most clearly in the blame towards the government. First, blame tells everyone what our standards are and that we think someone has overlooked them. For example, in blaming, the community says they think the federal government is below the norm in terms of the number of people who should have been vaccinated so far, especially compared to other countries.

Second, blaming punishes or penalizes people who have not lived up to our standards. To be blamed is quite unpleasant. It seems unfair if you haven’t done anything wrong, and if you did, it makes you feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed. The goal is to make sure there is a penalty for not meeting our standards. While it would be an exaggeration to say that all substandard politicians should go to jail, we also don’t think they should get away with it. Otherwise, there will be little incentive for them to meet these standards in the future.

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Finally, blame calls for a response. By blaming, we ask the person to admit that they have been below standard, to apologize and to change their strategy. Acknowledging fault and apologizing would mean that the government recognizes our standards and shows that it takes them seriously, signaling that it will do its best to meet them in the future. It is difficult to assess whether the government currently has the capacity to do so by getting more vaccines.

Yet you might wonder why is there currently so much blame?

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