Intention, Act, and Outcome in Behavioral Prediction and Moral Judgment

Zelazo, Philip David; Helwig, Charles C.; Lau, A. Y.-K.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1996.tb01869.x

Cited by 85 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Does a dog intend to hurt when it bites another dog that tries to take its food away?Does a 12-month-old boy intend to hurt when he hits the peer who grabbed the toy in his hand? The age of ''onset'' of intent may have been clear to Kagan in 1974, but it is still a subject of debate (Diamond, Werker, &Lalonde, 1994;Flavell &Miller, 1998;Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, 1996). The intent criteria is not only a problem for infants and nonhuman animals.…”

Section: Intent To Harmmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of aggressive behaviour during childhood: What have we learned in the past century?

Tremblay

2000

International Journal of Behavioral Development

757

524

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Research on human aggression has been a flourishing industry in the 20th century. As the attention shifted from an instinctual paradigm to a drive paradigm and a social learning paradigm, what have we learned on the development of aggressive behaviour during childhood? Are children born with an aggressive instinct or do they have to learn to aggress?This question has deep philosophical roots, but it also has important practical implications. Should interventions prevent children from learning to aggress or should they help children learn to inhibit aggressive reactions? Since most of the 20th century work on the development of aggression was concentrated on adolescents and elementary school age children, there appeared to be an implicit assumption that aggression is learned during these developmental periods. It is argued that to understand the origins of aggressive behaviour and prevent chronic cases of physical aggression we will need to focus on the development of aggressive behaviour during the first few years after birth, and differentiate among forms of aggressive behaviour. The form of agressive behaviour that is generally considered more “serious” or “socially unacceptable” (physical aggression) is clearly ontogenetically antecedent to less “serious” forms of aggressive behaviour, such as verbal aggression or indirect aggression. Furthermore, as a rule the frequency of physical aggression appears to decrease with age. However, infants’ physical aggression has generally not been considered developmentally significant. This is probably because of “the weakness of their limbs” and the apparent lack of “intentionality”. To have a relatively complete description of the life-span developmental trajectories of human aggressive behaviour by the end of the 21st century, we will need to start recruiting pregnant women very soon.

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Section: Intent To Harmmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of aggressive behaviour during childhood: What have we learned in the past century?

Tremblay

2000

International Journal of Behavioral Development

757

524

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…When moral scenarios present conflicting information about the outcome of an action and the intention of the actor, young children's moral judgments and justifications are determined by the action's outcome rather than the actor's intention (9)(10)(11)(12)(13). For example, a person who intends to direct a traveler to the right location but accidentally misdirects him is judged by young children to be ''naughtier'' than a person who intends to misdirect a passerby but accidentally directs him to the right place (9).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although subsequent research has revealed that young children can use information about intentions to make moral distinctions when consequences are held constant between scenarios (14,(20)(21)(22)(23), older children have consistently shown greater sensitivity to information about intentions. What develops then is not just ''theory of mind,'' or the ability to represent the mental states of others, but the ability to integrate this information with information about consequences in the context of moral judgment (12,13,24,25).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment

Young

Cushman²,

Hauser³

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

535

494

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Is the basis of criminality an act that causes harm, or an act undertaken with the belief that one will cause harm? The present study takes a cognitive neuroscience approach to investigating how information about an agent's beliefs and an action's consequences contribute to moral judgment. We build on prior developmental evidence showing that these factors contribute differentially to the young child's moral judgments coupled with neurobiological evidence suggesting a role for the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) in belief attribution. Participants read vignettes in a 2 ؋ 2 design: protagonists produced either a negative or neutral outcome based on the belief that they were causing the negative outcome (''negative'' belief) or the neutral outcome (''neutral'' belief). The RTPJ showed significant activation above baseline for all four conditions but was modulated by an interaction between belief and outcome. Specifically, the RTPJ response was highest for cases of attempted harm, where protagonists were condemned for actions that they believed would cause harm to others, even though the harm did not occur. The results not only suggest a general role for belief attribution during moral judgment, but also add detail to our understanding of the interaction between these processes at both the neural and behavioral levels.functional MRI ͉ medial prefrontal cortex ͉ morality ͉ right temporoparietal junction ͉ theory of mind

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“…Accordingly, it remains for future research to examine how children younger than age 9 would assign moral status. Given the intimate connection between the concept of harm and the ability to suffer, and given the fact that the concept of harm occupies a central place in the moral thinking of even 3-year-old children (Zelazo et al, 1996), it might be expected that even much younger children use the ability to suffer as a criterion for moral status assignment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is therefore not surprising that much research on the development of moral awareness has focused on how the moral judgments of children and adults about a perpetrator's doings are affected by (1) the perpetrator's responsibility for harming the victim and (2) the severity of the harm that is caused (e.g. Piaget, 1932;Yuill, 1984;Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, Children and adults are known to attribute both mental capacities to at least some non-human entities (Coley, 1995;Knight, Nunkoosing, Vrij, & Cherryman, 2003), but what evidence is there that they acknowledge the moral relevance of both types of attributions? The examples given by Kahn (2006) suggest that at least some children acknowledge the moral relevance of the ability to suffer.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The assignment of moral status: Age‐related differences in the use of three mental capacity criteria

Olthof¹,

Rieffe

Terwogt³

et al. 2008

British J of Dev Psycho

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This study examined children's and young adults' use of three mental capacity criteria for treating an entity as one to which moral subjects have moral obligations, that is, as having moral status. In line with philosophical theorizing, these criteria were the capacity to (1) perceive; (2) suffer; and (3) think. In this study, 116 respondents aged 9 to 18 years old gave moral judgments and guilt and shame attributions in response to stories about perpetrators whose behaviour negatively affected entities with different mental capacities. The moral judgments revealed that 9-year-old children assigned moral status primarily on the basis of the victimized entity's ability to suffer. Eleven-yearold children also used the ability to suffer, but they assigned additional moral status when the victimized entity was able to perceive. Young adults also used perception as a criterion, but they assigned additional moral status when the victimized entity was simultaneously able to suffer and able to think. When compared to their moral judgments, the moral emotion attributions of respondents of all age groups were more strongly affected by the victimized entity's ability to think.Many of the events that people take to be morally relevant involve a perpetrator causing harm to a victim, which in turn causes suffering on the side of the victim. It is therefore not surprising that much research on the development of moral awareness has focused on how the moral judgments of children and adults about a perpetrator's doings are affected by (1) the perpetrator's responsibility for harming the victim and (2) the severity of the harm that is caused (e.g.

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Intention, Act, and Outcome in Behavioral Prediction and Moral Judgment

Cited by 85 publications

References 55 publications

The development of aggressive behaviour during childhood: What have we learned in the past century?

The development of aggressive behaviour during childhood: What have we learned in the past century?

The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment

The assignment of moral status: Age‐related differences in the use of three mental capacity criteria

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