title: Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK. Electronic address: er70@st-andrews.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Erin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Robbins
authors.affiliation: Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, GA, USA.
authors.forename: Jason
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Shepard
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rochat
mesh_terms: 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
keywords: Cross-cultural psychology; Intentional action; Moral cognition; Moral evaluation; Side-effect effect