Abstract
Adults’ intentionality judgments regarding an action are influenced by their moral evaluation of this action. This is clearly indicated in the so-called side-effect effect: when told about an action (e.g. implementing a business plan) with an intended primary effect (e.g. raise profits) and a foreseen side effect (e.g. harming/helping the environment), subjects tend to interpret the bringing about of the side effect more often as intentional when it is negative (harming the environment) than when it is positive (helping the environment). From a cognitive point of view, it is unclear whether the side-effect effect is driven by the moral status of the side effects specifically, or rather more generally by its normative status. And from a developmental point of view, little is known about the ontogenetic origins of the effect. The present study therefore explored the cognitive foundations and the ontogenetic origins of the side-effect effect by testing 4-to 5-year-old children with scenarios in which a side effect was in accordance with/violated a norm. Crucially, the status of the norm was varied to be conventional or moral. Children rated the bringing about of side-effects as more intentional when it broke a norm than when it accorded with a norm irrespective of the type of norm. The side-effect effect is thus an early-developing, more general and pervasive phenomenon, not restricted to morally relevant side effects.
Highlights
Decades of research on theory of mind and moral reasoning have produced considerable insight into the development of the cognitive processes underlying each of these two socialcognitive domains
The eight children who wrongly answered control questions in one of their blocks of tasks gave similar responses. Given that for these children, sum scores could not be computed, we only analyzed the block for which control questions were answered correctly. Three of these children showed the “sideeffect effect” pattern by answering “intentionally” in the negative condition but “not intentionally” in the positive condition, while the others gave the same answer to the test question in both the negative and the positive condition
The side-effect effect in children is not confined to side effects that violate moral norms: the very same pattern held for side effects violating purely arbitrary conventional norms
Summary
Decades of research on theory of mind and moral reasoning have produced considerable insight into the development of the cognitive processes underlying each of these two socialcognitive domains. There has been comparatively little systematic research on their functional relation [1,2,3,4,5]. The exception is research on the influence of perceived intentionality behind an action on children’s moral judgments of the corresponding act. This research has shown that during the preschool years children’s moral judgments begin to be informed and modulated by information about the agent’s intentionality. Children this age, for example, PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0132933. For example, PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0132933 July 28, 2015
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