An earlier role for intent in children’s partner choice versus punishment.

Abstract

Among the many factors that influence our moral judgments, two are especially important: whether the person caused a bad outcome and whether they intended for it to happen. Notably, the weight accorded to these factors in adulthood varies by the type of judgment being made. For punishment decisions, intentions and outcomes carry relatively equal weight; for partner choice decisions (i.e., deciding whether or not to interact with someone again), intentions are weighted much more heavily. These behavioral differences in punishment and partner choice judgments may also reflect more fundamental differences in the cognitive processes supporting these decisions.Exploring how punishment and partner choice emerge in development provides important and unique insight into these processes as they emerge and mature. Here, we explore the developmental emergence of punishment and partner choice decisions in 4-to 9-year-old children. Given the importance of intentions for partner choice decisions-from both theoretical and empirical perspectives-we targeted the sensitivity of these two responses to others' intentions as well as outcomes caused. Our punishment results replicate past work: young children are more focused on outcomes caused and become increasingly sensitive to intentions with age. In contrast, partner choice judgments exhibit sensitivity to intentions at an earlier age than punishment judgments, manifesting as earlier partner choice in cases of attempted violations.These results reveal distinct developmental trajectories for punishment and partner choice judgments, with implications for our understanding of the processes underlying these two responses as well as the development of moral judgment more broadly.

Children’s consideration of motivation in evaluations of socially (un)mindful actions

“…Specifically, previous work on adults has shown that reputational motivations seem to matter greatly in adults' evaluations of prosocial behaviors, but less so in their evaluations of antisocial behaviors (Berman et al, 2015;Newman & Cain, 2014). Similar asymmetry in evaluations has also been found in developmental work: Children's partner selections were significantly influenced by motivations, but their punishment of antisocial behavior was mostly influenced by outcome (Martin et al, 2022). These findings together suggest that valence plays a significant role in how we incorporate motivations when understanding social actions.…”

“…For example, tainted motivations such as wanting to build up prosocial reputations can significantly damage the evaluations of charitymaking behaviors, but less so for evaluations of antisocial behaviors (Newman & Cain, 2014). Similar asymmetry in evaluations has also been found in developmental work that showed that children's partner selections were significantly influenced by motivations, but their punishment of antisocial behaviors was mostly influenced by outcomes (Martin et al, 2022). Thus, in the current study, we also investigate how children consider motivations in evaluating socially unmindful actions, and how this may differ from their evaluations of socially mindful actions.…”

Are some cultures more mind-minded in their moral judgements than others?

“…The role of intentions may also depend on the relational distance between the person who caused harm, and the observing judge. Some theorists have suggested that observers should care about a person's intentions when those intentions are diagnostic of the person's future behaviour [26], and when the observer can choose whether or not to interact with that person in the future [25]. If a person cannot control the harm they cause, then their intentions are irrelevant for their future value in relationships [26,37].…”

“…By contrast, if theory of mind is relatively effortless to deploy, then even relatively small or infrequent benefits would be enough to sustain people's probability of using it. Second, the function of theory of mind: some theorists have suggested that considering an individual's mental states is most useful when choosing interaction partners, versus when interacting with existing partners [25,26]. If you can never switch jobs, it might feel pointless to evaluate the leadership style of your current boss.…”

Young children's adaptive partner choice in cooperation and competition contexts

“…From around age two, partner preferences are also evident in children's prosocial behavior, as they preferentially help familiar individuals (Allen et al., 2018) or individuals who intended to share toys with them (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2010), and refrain from helping or interacting with individuals who have been mean to others (Dahl et al., 2013; Tasimi & Wynn, 2016; Vaish et al., 2010). Children also show partner selectivity based on factors such as food preference and physical appearance (Fawcett & Markson, 2010), group membership (Sparks et al., 2017), accent (Kinzler et al., 2007), and whether or not individuals intended to cause bad outcomes (Martin et al., 2022).…”