Moral Judgment in Old Age

Abstract

Younger (21-39 years) and older (63-90 years) adults were presented with scenarios illustrating either harmful or helpful actions. Each scenario provided information about the agent's intention, either neutral or valenced (harmful/helpful), and the outcome of his or her action, either neutral or valenced. Participants were asked to rate how morally good or bad the agent's action was. In judging harmful actions, older participants relied less on intentions and more on outcomes compared to younger participants. This age-related difference was associated with a decline in older adults' theory of mind abilities. However, we did not find evidence of any significant age-related difference in the evaluations of helpful actions. We argue that the selective association of aging with changes in the evaluation of harmful but not helpful actions may be due also to motivational factors and highlight some implications of the present findings for judicial systems.

The Effect of Cognitive Load on Intent‐Based Moral Judgment

“…These individuals often show increased condemnation of accidental harms Moran et al, 2011), and recent work has suggested that this may not be due to deficits in the representational ability to attribute intentions but rather limitations in cognitive resources . Our results on state-level reductions in cognitive resources accord well with this prediction, as does other work on trait-level reductions associated with those with autism Moran et al, 2011) or through the course of normal aging (Margoni et al, 2018;.…”

“…Moreover, in one of these studies, the effect of age was larger for judgments of wrongness than for judgment of punishment . Notably, no mediation by working memory or cognitive flexibility (Margoni et al, 2018) was detected, as might have been predicted given our current results. Executive function is a varied construct (Miyake et al, 2000), however, and possibly the inhibition of information about intentions on wrongness judgments posited in our theory attainment hypothesis occurs less through working memory or cognitive flexibility and more through other subtypes of executive function, such as cognitive inhibition.…”

“…This work suggests that causal processes, which are downregulated through development in childhood, may reassert themselves in older adulthood. Two recent studies have indeed found that older adults (>63 years of age) condemn accidental harms to a greater degree than younger adults (Margoni et al, 2018;. Moreover, in one of these studies, the effect of age was larger for judgments of wrongness than for judgment of punishment .…”

“…Thus, accidental harms transition from being strongly condemned to forgiven. (It is noteworthy that among older adults, this trend reverses, and their judgments begin to show more child-like sensitivity to accidental outcomes, in contrast to the intent-based judgments of younger adults; Margoni, Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2018. ) The outcome-to-intent shift also influences cases of attempted harm, in which the agent's intent is negative but no bad outcome obtains, though to a lesser extent (Baird & Astington, 2004;Costanzo et al, 1973;Cushman et al, 2013;Nobes et al, 2009;Zelazo et al, 1996).…”

Visual assessment of body condition and skin soiling in cattle by professionals and undergraduate students using photo slides

“…Higher scores in students for suggested control actions indicate that students are also less tolerant to animal soiling. It has been shown by Margoni et al (2018) that young adults (21-39 years) rely more on intentions and less on outcomes in judging harmful actions, compared to older people (63-90 years), which may motivate them to take stricter measures against a particular AW infringement. A survey of European citizens (European Commission, 2016) showed that young people and students were more interested in the conditions for farm animals.…”