Acting Intentionally and the Side-Effect Effect Theory of Mind and Moral Judgment

The concept of acting intentionally is an important nexus where theory of mind and moral judgment meet. Preschool children’s judgments of intentional action show a valence-driven asymmetry. Children say that a foreseen but disavowed side effect is brought about ‘‘on purpose’’ when the side effect itself is morally bad, but not when it is morally good. This is the first demonstration in preschoolers that moral judgment influences judgments of whether something was done on purpose (as opposed to judgments of purpose influencing moral judgment). Judgments of intentionality are usually assumed to be purely factual. That these judgments are sometimes partly normative—even in preschoolers—challenges current understanding. Young children’s judgments regarding foreseen side effects depend on whether the children process the idea that the character does not care about the side effect. As soon as preschoolers effectively process the theoryof-mind concept ‘‘not care that P,’’ children show the sideeffect effect. The development of theory of mind (for reviews, see Leslie, 2000; Leslie, Friedman, & German, 2004; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001) and the development of moral judgment (for reviews, see Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002; Turiel, 1994) have been intensively and independently researched over the past 20 years. However, there has been relatively little work relating the two domains. One exception has been research focusing on intention in action. Actions often have consequences that draw forth moral judgment, and whether an action is judged intentional or not influences that moral judgment. Piaget (1932) claimed that only children over the age of 7 years can conceive the role of intention in behavior. More recently, this idea has been questioned. For example, there is increasing evidence that infants already regard action as goal directed (Baldwin, 1993; Gergely, Bekkering, & Király, 2002; Gergely, Nadasdy, Csibra, & Biro, 1995; Leslie, 1994; Meltzoff, 1995; Woodward, 1998, 1999). Nuñez and Harris (1998) found that 3-year-olds will assign more blame for intentional than accidental behaviors, and Siegal and Peterson (1998) found that 3-year-olds can make a three-way distinction for assigning blame, differentiating whether a falsehood is uttered intentionally, because of an innocent mistake, or because of negligence. The latter studies point to an early link between theoryof-mind reasoning and moral judgment in which intentional/ unintentional judgments subsequently influence good/bad judgments. Thus, this link runs from theory of mind (purpose) to morality (good/bad). In a recent study with adults, Knobe (2003a) showed that the connection can also run in the opposite direction: from morality to theory of mind. Subjects were read vignettes about an agent who brings about a foreseen side effect—an effect that the agent foresees but does not care about. Subjects were then asked whether or not the agent brought about the side effect ‘‘intentionally.’’ Responses appeared to be sensitive to the moral valence of the effect itself, with morally bad effects being considered intentional and morally good effects being considered unintentional. These judgments emerged with help versus harm variants of the following scenario (Knobe, 2003a, 2003b, 2004): The vice president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, ‘‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, and it will also help/harm the environment.’’ Address correspondence to Alan M. Leslie, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, 152 Frelinghuysen Rd., Piscataway, NJ 08854, e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 17—Number 5 421 Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science The chairman of the board answered, ‘‘I don’t care at all about helping/harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.’’ They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was