Action-inaction asymmetries in moral scenarios: Replication of the omission bias examining morality and blame with extensions linking to causality, intent, and regret (original) (raw)
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Moral asymmetries in judgments of agency withstand ludicrous causal deviance
Frontiers in psychology, 2015
Americans have been shown to attribute greater intentionality to immoral than to amoral actions in cases of causal deviance, that is, cases where a goal is satisfied in a way that deviates from initially planned means (e.g., a gunman wants to hit a target and his hand slips, but the bullet ricochets off a rock into the target). However, past research has yet to assess whether this asymmetry persists in cases of extreme causal deviance. Here, we manipulated the level of mild to extreme causal deviance of an immoral versus amoral act. The asymmetry in attributions of intentionality was observed at all but the most extreme level of causal deviance, and, as we hypothesized, was mediated by attributions of blame/credit and judgments of action performance. These findings are discussed as they support a multiple-concepts interpretation of the asymmetry, wherein blame renders a naïve concept of intentional action (the outcome matches the intention) more salient than a composite concept (the...
The omission effect in moral cognition: toward a functional explanation
2011
Moral judgment involves much more than computations of the expected consequences of behavior. A prime example of the complexity of moral thinking is the frequently replicated finding that violations by omission are judged less morally wrong than violations by commission, holding intentions constant. Here we test a novel hypothesis: Omissions are judged less harshly because they produce little material evidence of wrongdoing. Evidence is crucial because moral accusations are potentially very costly unless supported by others. In our experiments, the omission effect was eliminated when physical evidence showed that an omission was chosen. Perpetrators who "opted out" by pressing a button that would clearly have no causal effects on the victim, rather than rescuing them, were judged as harshly as perpetrators who directly caused death. These results show that, to reduce condemnation, omissions must not only be noncausal, they must also leave little or no material evidence that a choice was made.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2019
People typically apply the concept of intentionality to actions directed at achieving desired outcomes. For example, a businessperson might intentionally start a program aimed at increasing company profits. However, if starting the program leads to a foreknown and harmful side effect (e.g., to the environment), the side effect is frequently labeled as intentional even though it was not specifically intended or desired. In contrast, positive side effects (e.g., helping the environment) are rarely labeled as intentional. One explanation of this side-effect effect—that harmful (but not helpful) side effects are labeled as intentional— is that moral considerations influence whether people view actions as intentional or not, implying that bad outcomes are perceived as more intentional than good outcomes. The present research, however, shows that people redefine questions about intentionality to focus on agents’ foreknowledge in harming cases and on their lack of desire or intention in helpful cases, suggesting that the same intentionality question is being interpreted differently as a function of side effect valence. Consistent with this, removing foreknowledge lowers the frequency of labeling harming as intentional without affecting whether people label helping as intentional. Likewise, increasing agents’ desire to help or avoid harming increases rates of labeling helping as intentional without affecting rates of labeling harming as intentional. In summary, divergent decisions to label side effects as intentional or not appear to reflect differences in the criteria people use to evaluate each case, resulting in different interpretations of what questions about intentionality are asking.
Studying the folk concept of intentional action, Knobe (2003a) discovered a puzzling asymmetry: most people consider some bad side effects as intentional while they consider some good side effects as unintentional. In this study, we extend these findings with new experiments. The first experiment shows that the very same effect can be found in ascriptions of intentionality in the case of means for action. The second and third experiments show that means are nevertheless generally judged more intentional than side effects, and that people do take into account the structure of the action when ascribing intentionality. We then discuss a number of hypotheses that can account for these data, using reactions times from our first experiment.
Asymmetries in Judgments of Responsibility and Intentional Action
Recent experimental research on the ‘ Knobe effect ’ suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that there is a bi-directional relation between attributions of intentional action and evaluative considerations. We defend a novel account of this phenomenon that exploits two factors: (i) an intuitive asymmetry in judgments of responsibility (e.g. praise/blame) and (ii) the fact that intentionality commonly connects the evaluative status of actions to the responsibility of actors. We present the results of several new studies that provide empirical evidence in support of this account while disconfirming various currently prominent alternative accounts. We end by discussing some implications of this account for folk psychology.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2017
Research has consistently shown that people consider harmful side effects of an action more intentional than helpful side effects. This phenomenon is known as the sideeffect effect (SEE), which refers to the influence of moral considerations in judgments of intentionality and other non-moral concepts. There is an ongoing debate about how to explain this asymmetric pattern of judgment and the psychological factors involved in it. It has been posited that affective reactions to agents that bring about harmful sideeffects could bias intentionality attributions in these cases, explaining the asymmetric pattern of intentionality judgments that we observe in the SEE. We call this the affective bias hypothesis (ABH). Evidence for the ABH is mixed, with some findings suggesting a role for affective processes, while others suggesting that affective processes play no role in the SEE. A possible explanation for these apparently contradictory results points to affective processes involved in the SEE being confined to anger. In a series of empirical studies, we systematically measured and manipulated participants' anger in order to test this possibility. Our findings suggest that anger play no role in intentionality judgments in SEE cases, while providing support for a non-emotional motivation to blame as a factor underlying the SEE.
Actor-Observer Asymmetries in Judgments of Intentional Actions
Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2012
Much recent empirical research has explored the influence of moral evaluations on judgments about the intentionality of foreseeable side-effects of actions. Research on this 'Side-Effect effect' (also called the 'Knobe effect') has relied almost exclusively on vignette-based surveys, which have serious limitations when used in isolation. We present a novel behavioral methodology that tests the Side-Effect effect in two previously unexamined contexts: (i) judgments of real (rather than hypothetical) actions, and (ii) judgments about one's own actions. The results suggest that judgments about one's own actions tend to show a reverse Side-Effect effect: actors judge that (real) positive sideeffects of their own actions are intentional whereas negative ones are not. The use of non-hypothetical situations also appears to attenuate the standard Side-Effect effect, which raises interesting challenges for standard theoretical accounts. These results provide preliminary evidence that the Side-Effect effect is driven by the same mechanisms underlying other asymmetries in causal attribution.
Intentionality Attributions About Perfect and Imperfect Duty Violations
The Journal of social psychology, 2010
Intentionality attributions were explored by drawing on the distinction between perfect and imperfect moral duties. Previous research has shown that perfect duty violations carry greater attributional weight than imperfect duty violations . In Studies 1 and 2, the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties was replicated with intentionality judgments, and perfect duty violations received higher intentionality attributions than imperfect duty violations. In Study 3 this effect was reversed by manipulating information about an agent's mental intentions or plans to perform a behavior. That is, participants attributed less intentionality to perfect duty violations compared to imperfect duty violations when a mental intention to perform the behavior was absent.