Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures.
Individuals tend to judge bad side effects as more intentional than good side effects (the Knobe or side-effect effect). Here, we assessed how widespread these findings are by testing eleven adult cohorts of eight highly contrasted cultures on their attributions of intentional action as well as ratings of blame and praise. We found limited generalizability of the original side-effect effect, and even a reversal of the effect in two rural, traditional cultures (Samoa and Vanuatu) where participants were more likely to judge the good side effect as intentional. Three follow-up experiments indicate that this reversal of the side-effect effect is not due to semantics and may be linked to the perception of the status of the protagonist. These results highlight the importance of factoring cultural context in our understanding of moral cognition.
['Robbins|Erin|E|', 'Shepard|Jason|J|', 'Rochat|Philippe|P|']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D000369:Aged, 80 and over D003364:Costa Rica D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison D003469:Culture D006721:Honduras D006801:Humans D033182:Intention D007600:Judgment D008800:Mexico D008875:Middle Aged D009014:Morals D056910:Republic of Korea D018947:Samoa D012938:Social Perception D014481:United States D009514:Vanuatu D055815:Young Adult
Intentional action Moral evaluation Side-effect effect Moral cognition Cross-cultural psychology