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

Abstract

Research has documented that individuals consider outcomes, intentions, and transgressor negligence when making morally relevant judgments (Nobes, Panagiotaki, & Engelhardt, 2017). However, less is known about whether individuals attend to both victim and transgressor negligence in their evaluations. The current study measured 3-to 6-year-olds (N = 70), 7-to 12-year-olds (N = 54), and adults' (N = 97, ages 18-25 years) moral judgments about scenarios in which an accidental transgression occurred involving property damage or physical harm. Participants were either assigned to conditions where the victim or the transgressor was negligent. Results revealed attention to negligence among all participants across a range of different moral judgment measures (including acceptability judgments, punishment judgments, and attributions of blame), with age-related increases in attention to negligence evident. Results provide novel evidence that children and adults consider not just outcomes and intentions, but also the role of negligence in both victims and transgressors, when making social decisions.

The role of theory of mind, group membership, and apology in intergroup forgiveness among children and adolescents.

“…and to transgressions that vary in the severity of the harm that is caused. It may also be interesting to explore intergroup forgiveness in response to transgressions that were accidental and intentional (Killen et al, 2011; Young & Saxe, 2009) and to transgressions where the transgressor was trying to be careful or was being negligent (Mulvey et al, 2020; Nobes et al, 2016; Nobes et al, 2017). Finally, it may be interesting to examine forgiveness in situations where the transgression is repeated, such as in instances of bullying.…”

Judging the recipients of social actions

“…One possibility is that preschoolers used a form of outcome‐based reasoning to form impressions of recipients, a focus not altogether captured in previous discussions of intention‐outcome reasoning (see Mulvey et al., 2020). Children may have matched the outcome of each scene to the actor rather than to the recipient and used this strategy to conclude that the recipient does not deserve blame.…”

“…These negative perceptions of recipients of negative acts manifest when adults perceive that recipients of negative acts are to blame for their own misfortune because they are irresponsible (e.g., Adams‐Price et al., 2004) or have otherwise ‘invited’ the harm done against them (Cortina et al., 2018). In the absence of either real or perceived negligence (e.g., Mulvey et al., 2020), it is unclear how young children's inferences about the recipients of negative behavior compare to inferences about the recipients of positive behavior. Children may attend selectively to frequency information to evaluate recipients when valence is salient (e.g., Boseovski & Lee, 2008).…”

Judging Accidental Harm: Due Care and Foreseeability of Side Effects

“…Moreover, a recent study showed that both children and adults attend to transgressor's negligence but also to victim's negligence (Mulvey et al, 2020).…”