University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Portland State University, OR, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2021 Mar;47(3):410-425. doi: 10.1177/0146167220928237. Epub 2020 Jun 29.
People frequently label harmful (but not helpful) side effects as intentional. One proposed explanation for this asymmetry is that moral considerations fundamentally affect how people think about and apply the concept of intentional action. We propose something else: People interpret the meaning of questions about intentionally harming versus helping in fundamentally different ways. Four experiments substantially support this hypothesis. When presented with helpful (but not harmful) side effects, people interpret questions concerning intentional helping as literally asking whether helping is the agents' intentional action or believe questions are asking about why agents acted. Presented with harmful (but not helpful) side effects, people interpret the question as asking whether agents intentionally acted, knowing this would lead to harm. Differences in participants' definitions consistently helped to explain intentionality responses. These findings cast doubt on whether side-effect intentionality asymmetries are informative regarding people's core understanding and application of the concept of intentional action.
人们经常将有害（但无益）的副作用标记为有意的。对于这种不对称性，有一种解释是道德因素从根本上影响了人们对有意行为概念的思考和应用方式。我们提出了另一种解释：人们以根本不同的方式来解释关于有意伤害和帮助的问题的含义。四项实验充分支持了这一假设。当人们面对有益（但无副作用）的情况时，他们会将关于有意帮助的问题理解为字面意义上的询问，即帮助是否是代理人的有意行为，或者认为问题是在询问代理人为何采取行动。而当面对有害（但无有益）的副作用时，人们会将问题理解为询问代理人是否明知故犯，有意采取行动导致了伤害。参与者的定义差异一致有助于解释有意性反应。这些发现对副作用的有意性不对称性是否能为人们对有意行为概念的核心理解和应用提供信息提出了质疑。
