Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Boston College.
Department of Psychology, Paul Valéry University.
Cogn Sci. 2021 Apr;45(4):e12965. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12965.
When making a moral judgment, people largely care about two factors: Who did it (causal responsibility), and did they intend to (intention)? Since Piaget's seminal studies, we have known that as children mature, they gradually place greater emphasis on intention, and less on mere bad outcomes, when making moral judgments. Today, we know that this developmental shift has several signature properties. Recently, it has been shown that when adults make moral judgments under cognitive load, they exhibit a pattern similar to young children; that is, their judgments become notably more outcome based. Here, we show that all of the same signature properties that accompany the outcome-to-intent shift in childhood characterize the "intent-to-outcome" shift obtained under cognitive load in adults. These findings hold important implications for current theories of moral judgment.
当进行道德判断时，人们主要关心两个因素：谁做的（因果责任），以及他们是否有意（意图）？自皮亚杰的开创性研究以来，我们已经知道，随着儿童的成熟，他们在进行道德判断时，逐渐更加重视意图，而不是仅仅关注不良后果。如今，我们知道这种发展转变具有几个特征。最近的研究表明，当成年人在认知负荷下进行道德判断时，他们表现出类似于儿童的模式；也就是说，他们的判断明显更加基于结果。在这里，我们表明，伴随儿童从结果到意图转变的所有相同特征都与成年人在认知负荷下获得的“意图到结果”转变特征相符。这些发现对当前的道德判断理论具有重要意义。
