How do people react to the headline news they receive? According to the model of people as intuitive scientists (Kelley, 1972; Ross, 1977), people-like scientists-make causal explanations (i.e., why did an event take place?) and assign responsibility to the person, the situation, or both. However, a more recently proposed social-functionalist model (Tetlock, 2002) views people less as intuitive scientists trying to understand the world and more as intuitive prosecutors trying to protect a fragile social order.