Story order in attribution of moral responsibility

Abstract

AbstractDiscourse comprehension relies on the construction of a mental model that represents the unfolding in time of the events described. In causal scenarios, where the action of one agent (the enabler) temporally precedes and enables the action of another agent (the causer), discourse may reflect the underlying event structure by describing the enabler’s action first and then the causer’s action (story order) or may describe the causer’s action first (backward order). Studies in the literature have shown that adults consider causers to be more responsible than enablers in moral scenarios. Based on the assumption that story order favors the construction of a mental model of events, we conducted an experiment to test the prediction that preference for the causer over the enabler should be greater when events are presented in story order than in backward order. The participants in the experiment were 42 fifth-grade children, 42 adolescents, and 42 adults. The results of the experiment confirmed the prediction for all three groups of participants. We discuss the practical implications of these results for learning contexts, legal contexts, and the psychology of moral judgments.