Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions (original) (raw)
Related papers
Inferences about character and motive influence intentionality attributions about side effects
British Journal of Social Psychology, 2011
In two studies, we predicted and found that inferences about motive and character influence intentionality attributions about foreseeable consequences of action (i.e., side effects). First, we show that inferences about intentionality are greater for good side effects than bad side effects when a target person's character is described positively. In Study 2, we manipulated information about a target person and found that inferences about intentionality were greater when side effects were consistent with a target person's character and motives. Overall, our data cast doubt on the generality of the side-effect effect. We discuss our findings and their implications for future research on intentionality and social perception.
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.
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.
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.
Understanding Side-Effect Intentionality Asymmetries: Meaning, Morality, or Attitudes and Defaults
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2020
People frequently label harmful (but not helpful) side effects as intentional. One proposed explanation for this asymmetry is that moral considerations fundamentally affect how people think about and apply the concept of intentional action. We propose something else: People interpret the meaning of questions about intentionally harming versus helping in fundamentally different ways. Four experiments substantially support this hypothesis. When presented with helpful (but not harmful) side effects, people interpret questions concerning intentional helping as literally asking whether helping is the agents' intentional action or believe questions are asking about why agents acted. Presented with harmful (but not helpful) side effects, people interpret the question as asking whether agents intentionally acted, knowing this would lead to harm. Differences in participants' definitions consistently helped to explain intentionality responses. These findings cast doubt on whether side-effect intentionality asymmetries are informative regarding people's core understanding and application of the concept of intentional action.
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.
Social Cognition, 1990
Positive and negative motives and outcomes were manipulated in a series of short vignettes, along with whether the outcomes of behavior were relatively foreseeable or unforeseeable. Subjects rated the actor's responsibility (praise-blame) for the outcome and for the goodness or badness of the actor's intentions. As expected, main effects were obtained for both the actor's motives and the outcomes they produced on ratings of perceived responsibility and intention. The proposed link between motive and intention was supported by the fact that the effect of motive on responsibility was completely eradicated when ratings of intention were covaried. When the outcomes of behavior were foreseeable, evidential (mediated by inferences of intentionality) influences of outcome information were expected to occur, whereas with low foreseeability, only an extraevidential effect (unmediated by inferences about intentionality) was expected. As predicted, the effect of outcome information was significant under conditions of both high and low foreseeability but was unassociated with ratings of intention when the outcomes of behavior were relatively unforeseeable. The distinction between evidential and extra-evidential factors sheds light on previous attributional research on responsibility and related evaluations.
The Moral Dimension of Intentionality Judgments
2004
Joshua Knobe (2003a, b) presented data that suggest people's judgments of a behavior's intentionality may be significantly influenced by moral considerations. In particular, Knobe (2003b) argues that when people judge the intentionality of an action with moral consequences, they fail to consider an important component of intentionality-the agent's skill (Malle & Knobe, 1997)-that they do consider when judging an almost identical action with neutral consequences. This finding raises a number of issues about the consistency of intentionality judgments and perhaps even the unity of the folk concept of intentionality. Moreover, it raises the specter of a bias in people's thinking, namely to ignore important information when judging morally significant actions, which, if true, would have considerable impact on legal proceedings.
moral values produce dierent judgments of intentional action
Recent work in social psychology and experimental philosophy has suggested that moral considerations (praise vs. blame) can influence judgments about the intentional status of an act, contradicting both lay and legal assumptions about the relationship between theory of mind and morality. A corollary of this account suggests that different assessments of intentional action should emerge whenever people hold different moral values. Five studies validated this implication. Participants were more likely to report an action as intentionally caused if it lead to a negative side-effect that had strong moral significance to the participant. This pattern was found when looking at differences in participants' protected values (Exepriments 1 & 2), political orientation (Experiments 3 & 4), and gender (Experiment 5). These findings support the claim that moral values can strongly influence lay concepts of intentional action, providing an explanation of how people may arrive at different judgments of intentionality while nevertheless agreeing on the actors state of mind.