Knowing, Risking, and Being Responsible: A Qualitative Study of the Epistemic Side-Effect Effect

Abstract

The epistemic side-effect effect (ESEE) occurs when people are more willing to attribute knowledge of a side effect in harmful or norm-violating cases than in helpful or norm-conforming ones. This article examines ESEE through semi-structured interviews with 63 Polish-speaking participants. We analyse how participants interpreted and justified knowledge ascriptions across scenarios varying in harm–help structure, probability, and order of presentation. The interviews show that participants did not apply a single stable standard of knowledge. They moved between several epistemic repertoires: knowledge as certainty or near-certainty, knowledge as awareness of a possibility or risk, knowledge as being informed, knowledge as uptake of information, and knowledge as responsibility-relevant awareness. Probability mattered, but it did not function as a fixed threshold. In help cases, probability more often retained its ordinary evidential role; in harm cases, even low probability could be treated as a warning or risk that should guide action. The findings suggest that ESEE is not only a difference in attribution rates but also an interpretive phenomenon: harm and help contexts shape what kind of epistemic relation ordinary speakers take the knowledge claim to express.