Who Is to Blame? Children's and Adults' Moral Judgments Regarding Victim and Transgressor Negligence

Children and adolescents rectify unequal allocations of leadership duties in the classroom

Little is known about how children and adolescents evaluate unequal teacher allocations of leadership duties based on ethnicity-race and gender in the classroom. U.S. boys and girls, White (40.7%), Multiracial (18.5%), Black/African American (16.0%), Latine (14.2%), Asian (5.5%), Pacific Islander (0.4%), and other (4.7%) ethnic-racial backgrounds, 8-14 years, N = 275, evaluated teacher allocations of high-status leadership positions favoring specific ethnic-racial or gender groups during 2018-2021. Adolescents, more than children, negatively evaluated unequal teacher allocations of leadership duties that resulted in group-based inequalities, expected peers who shared the identity of a group disadvantaged by the teacher's allocation to view it more negatively than others, and rectified inequalities. Understanding perceptions of teacher-based bias provides an opportunity for interventions designed to create fair and just classrooms that motivate all students to achieve.

Distributing Blame Among Multiple Entities When Autonomous Technologies Cause Harm

As autonomous technology emerges, new variations in old questions arise. When autonomous technologies cause harm, who is to blame? The current studies compare reactions toward harms caused by human-controlled vehicles (HCVs) or human soldiers (HSs) to identical harms by autonomous vehicles (AVs) or autonomous robot soldiers. Drivers of HCVs, or HSs, were blamed more than mere users of AVs or HSs who outsourced their duties to ARSs. However, as human drivers/soldiers became less involved in (or were unaware of the preprogramming that led to) the harm, blame was redirected toward other entities (i.e., manufacturers and the tech company's executives), showing the opposite pattern as human drivers/soldiers. Results were robust to how blame was measured (i.e., degrees of blame versus apportionment of total blame). Overall, this research furthers the blame literature, raising questions about why, how (much), and to whom blame is assigned when multiple agents are potentially culpable.

Group Norms Influence Children's Expectations About Status Based on Wealth and Popularity

Children’s understanding of status and group norms influence their expectations about social encounters. However, status is multidimensional and children may perceive status stratification (i.e., high- and low-status) differently across multiple status dimensions (i.e., wealth and popularity). The current study investigated the effect of status level and norms on children’s expectations about intergroup affiliation in wealth and popularity contexts. Participants (N = 165; age range: 5–10 years; M_age = 7.72 years) were randomly assigned to hear two scenarios where a high- or low-status target affiliated with opposite-status groups based on either wealth or popularity. In one scenario, the group expressed an inclusive norm. In the other scenario, the group expressed an exclusive norm. For each scenario, children made predictions about children’s expectations for a target to acquire social resources. Novel findings indicated that children associated wealth status to some extent, but they drew stronger inferences from the wealth dimension than from the popularity dimension. In contrast to previous evidence that children distinguish between high- and low-status groups, we did not find evidence to support this in the context of the current study. In addition, norms of exclusion diminished children’s expectations for acquiring social resources from wealth and popularity groups but this effect was more pronounced between wealth groups. We found age differences in children’s expectations in regards to norms, but not in regards to status. The implications of how these effects, in addition to lack of effects, bear on children’s expectations about acquiring resources are discussed.

Infants' intention-based evaluations of distributive actions

Recent research revealed that infants attend to agents' intentions when they evaluate helping actions. The current study investigated whether infants also consider agents' intentions when they evaluate distributive actions. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants were first shown two failed attempts to perform a distribution. In the "failed equal distribution," the distributor first tried to reach one of the recipients to deliver an apple, failed, and then attempted to reach the other possible recipient to deliver a different apple and also failed. In the "failed unequal distribution," a different distributor always tried unsuccessfully to reach the same beneficiary. Then, in the test phase, infants were presented with the two distributors side by side, and infants' spontaneous preferential looking and reaching actions were recorded. We found a reliable preference for the equal distributor in both the visual and manual responses. Experiments 2 and 3 helped to rule out alternative explanations based on perceptual cues and affiliative biases. Overall, these findings suggest that infants' ability to evaluate distributive actions relies not only on the outcomes but also on the distributors' intentions.

EXPRESS: Judging accidental harm: reasoning style modulates the weight of intention and harm severity

When judging a perpetrator who harmed someone accidentally, humans rely on distinct information pertaining to the perpetrator and victim. The present study investigates how reasoning style modulates the contribution of the victim's harm and the perpetrator's intention to third-party judgment of accidental harm. In two pre-registered online experiments, we simultaneously manipulated harm severity and the perpetrator's intention. Participants completed reasoning measures as well as a moral judgment task consisting of short narratives which depicted the interaction between a perpetrator and a victim. In experiment 1, we manipulated the perpetrator's intent to harm (accidental vs. intentional harm) and the victim's harm (mild vs. severe harm). In experiment 2, we aimed to manipulate intent in accidental harm scenarios exclusively, using positive or neutral intents and manipulating harm severity (mild vs. severe harm). As expected, intent and harm severity moderated participants' moral judgment of acceptability, punishment and blame. Most importantly, in both experiments, the perpetrator's intent not only interacted with outcome severity but also polarized moral judgments in participants with a more deliberative reasoning style. While moral judgments of more intuitive reasoners were less sensitive to intent, more deliberative reasoners were more forgiving of accidental harm, especially following mild harm. These findings extend previous studies by showing that reasoning style interacts with intent and harm severity to shape moral judgment of accidents.

They should have known better: The roles of negligence and outcome in moral judgements of accidental actions

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the relative influence of agents' negligence and their actions' unintended outcomes on moral judgements. In Study 1, 343 participants were asked in an online questionnaire about a driver whose level of negligence, and the severity of the outcome, were varied systematically. Each judged how much punishment and blame the driver deserved, and rated her negligence, causal responsibility, and intentionality. In Study 2, 341 participants completed the same questionnaire, and also judged the driver's wrongness and the outcome's severity. In both studies, judgements were strongly influenced by negligence; blame was also affected by causal responsibility, and wrongness by intention, but the relatively slight outcome effect on blame and wrongness was largely mediated by negligence. In contrast, both negligence and outcome had substantial effects on punishment judgements; most participants assigned high levels of punishment when, and only when, the outcome was negative and the agent was negligent. These findings shed light on the intriguing phenomenon of moral luck, and indicate that it applies more to punishment judgements than to blame and wrongness. They also indicate that when no negligence information is provided in the description of accidents (as in many previous studies), participants often attribute negligence to agents and judge them accordingly. It seems that the effect of outcome on moral judgements has often been overestimated by researchers, and that of negligence underestimated.

But they weren't being careful! Role of theory of mind in moral judgments about victim and transgressor negligence

Previous research showed that children are influenced not only by intentions and outcomes but also by transgressor negligence in their moral judgments. The current study investigated the role of transgressor and victim negligence on children's moral judgments. Children's false-belief theory of mind understanding (FBU ToM) was examined as a possible factor that might shape moral judgments in contexts involving negligence. Children (N = 117, M_age = 5.41 years, range = 3-8) were presented with two stories involving property damage and physical harm where negligence was manipulated and with a series of questions assessing moral judgments regarding act acceptability of the transgressor and victim, punishment, and assessments of alternative actions. FBU ToM was measured with a false-content task. Children with higher FBU ToM were more likely to consider both transgressor and victim negligence in their moral judgments across different transgressions. The findings have implications for how social cognitive abilities interact with transgressor and victim negligence in moral decisions.

The Effect of Cognitive Load on Intent-Based Moral Judgment

When making a moral judgment, people largely care about two factors: Who did it (causal responsibility), and did they intend to (intention)? Since Piaget's seminal studies, we have known that as children mature, they gradually place greater emphasis on intention, and less on mere bad outcomes, when making moral judgments. Today, we know that this developmental shift has several signature properties. Recently, it has been shown that when adults make moral judgments under cognitive load, they exhibit a pattern similar to young children; that is, their judgments become notably more outcome based. Here, we show that all of the same signature properties that accompany the outcome-to-intent shift in childhood characterize the "intent-to-outcome" shift obtained under cognitive load in adults. These findings hold important implications for current theories of moral judgment.

Judging accidental harm: Due care and foreseeability of side effects

Both in philosophy and in cognitive psychology, models of moral judgment posit that individuals take into account both agents’ intentions and actions’ outcomes. The present research focused on a third crucial piece of information, agents’ negligence. In Study 1, participants judged the moral wrongness and punishability of agents’ actions that resulted in negative side effects. In the scenarios, we orthogonally manipulated whether the agent acted with or without due care and whether she had or did not have information to foresee the negative side effects of her actions. Participants judged careless agents more condemnable than careful agents, especially when negative side effects could have been easily foreseen. In Study 2, we manipulated due care in acting in cases where the agent’s primary intention was to bring about a certain outcome without knowing that such outcome would actually be harmful. Here information about the foreseeability of negative outcomes was not provided, and participants judged actions performed with care more wrong and punishable than actions performed without care. This suggests that sometimes acting carefully and nevertheless causing harm may constitute evidence of the presence of negative intentions in the agents or evidence of the fact that agents indeed could have foreseen the negative effects of their actions. Together, these findings indicate that carefulness in acting and foreseeability are highly intertwined in moral judgment, and highlight the need to improve existing processing models of moral judgment to account for people’s evaluation of agents and actions whenever negligence can be attributed.