Abstract
Moral judgements are crucial for social life and rely on the analysis of the agent’s intention and the outcome of the agent’s action. The current study examines to the influence of how the information is presented on moral judgement. The first experiment investigated the effects of the order in which intention and outcome information was presented. The results showed that participants relied more on the last presented information, suggesting a recency effect. The second experiment required participants to make two types of judgments (wrongness vs. punishment) and manipulated the order of the requested two types of judgments. Results showed an asymmetrical transfer effect whereby punishment judgements, but not wrongness judgements were affected by the order of presentation. This asymmetrical transfer effect was likely linked to the ambiguity of the punishment judgement. Altogether, the study showed that the order in which information was presented and the order in which one was asked to think about the wrongness of an action or the punishment that the action deserves were two factors that should be irrelevant, but actually influenced moral judgements. The influence of these factors was mostly observed during the most difficult judgements, precisely in situations where human decision is called upon, such as in court trials.
Highlights
Moral judgements play an important role in our daily life
Intention and outcome information were orthogonally manipulated leading to four conditions: neutral scenarios where the agent had no intention to harm and no harm occurred; accidental harm scenarios where the agent had no intention to harm but the harm occurred accidentally; attempted harm scenarios where the agent had the intention to harm but no harm occurred and; intentional harm scenarios where the agent had the intention to harm and the harm occurred
The decomposition of the Intention by Order interaction showed that when there was no intention to harm, participants gave significantly less severe punishment ratings when the punishment question was presented after the wrongness question compared to when the punishment question was presented first
Summary
Moral judgements play an important role in our daily life. They allow us to detect individuals who are responsible for harmful or potentially harmful actions, to hold them accountable for their actions and to punish them. The identification of moral transgressors who threaten our wellbeing allows us to avoid or ostracize these transgressors (Alicke, 2000). The current study aimed at examining the extent to which moral judgements are based solely on relevant principles. The study manipulated two factors that should be irrelevant to moral judgements: the order in which intention and outcome information was presented and the order of two consecutive types of moral judgment (wrongness vs punishment). The aim was to examine the extent to which these two factors influence moral judgements
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