Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions

Abstract

The side-effect effect (SEE) is the observation that people’s intuition about whether an action was intentional depends on whether the outcome is good or bad. The asymmetric response, however, does not represent all subjects’ judgments (Nichols and Ulatowski, 2007). It remains unexplored on subjective factors that can mediate the size of SEE. Thus, the current study investigated whether an individual related factor, specifically, whether adults’ intensity of caring about an outcome of someone’s actions influences their judgments about whether that person intended the outcome. We hypothesized that participants’ judgments about fictional agents’ responsibility for their action’s side-effects would depend on how much they care about the domain of the side-effect. In two experiments, the intensity of caring affected participants’ ascription of intention to an agent’s negative unintended side-effect. The stronger ascription of intentionality to negative than positive side-effects (i.e., the SEE; Knobe, 2003) was found only in domains in which participants reported higher levels of caring. Also, the intensity of caring increased intentionality attributions reliably for negative side-effects but not for positive side-effects. These results suggest that caring about a domain mediates an asymmetrical ascription of intentionality to negative more than positive side-effects.

When company decisions harm or help the environment: the influence of social context and affective state on moral and causal responsibility attributions

“…Furthermore, helping the environment should be considered a standard behavior, whereas harming the environment violates dominant social norms and surpasses a certain "default point" of moral behavior (Kaspar et al, 2016;Knobe, 2010). Liao et al (2018) extended this explanation by showing that the degree of caring for the outcome of an action mediates intentionality attributions, especially for negative outcomes. Another determining factor could be the differing probability of the outcomes, as negative outcomes were deemed more likely than positive outcomes (Nakamura, 2018).…”

Unjustifiably Irresponsible: The Effects of Social Roles on Attributions of Intent

“…Both experimental and correlational studies support TJM. For example, people who place greater value on preventing the harmful side effect are more likely to think harming was intentional, whereas people who more strongly value profit (thus viewing the trade-off as more justified) are more likely to think the harm was unintentional (Liao et al, 2018;Tannenbaum et al, 2007). Similarly, people think harm was more intentional when it was done without good reason than when it was done with good reason (Phelan & Sarkissian, 2009).…”