The temporal dynamics of third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions: answers from a 2-response paradigm

Schwartz, Flora; Passemar, Anastasia; Djeriouat, Hakim; Trémolière, Bastien

doi:10.1080/13546783.2023.2210847

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…More specifically, completing an interference task was associated with harsher judgment of someone who harmed accidentally (Buon et al, 2013;Martin et al, 2021). Another study also showed that preventing people from reasoning led to less severe judgment of someone who harmed intentionally and to some extent more severe judgment of someone who harmed accidentally (Schwartz et al, 2023). Thus, previous work suggested that manipulating reasoning, or manipulating the cognitive resources available at the time of making a moral judgment, may impact on the intent-based analysis (Buon, 2013;Martin et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…A line of research has shown that people who had to judge a moral transgression under high cognitive load made moral judgments that were more based on outcome than people in a control condition (Buon et al, 2013;Martin et al, 2021). Additionally, time pressure and cognitive load seem to decrease the weight of intention in moral judgment: participants were less severe toward agents who intended to harm when they were both under time pressure and cognitive load, and were more severe after they were given the opportunity to revise their judgment and take all the time they needed to respond (Schwartz et al, 2023). There is also evidence that people who make moral judgments in a second language (supposed to tax cognitive resources) relative to their native language make moral judgments that are more outcome-based (Geipel et al, 2016).…”

Section: Integrating Intention Into Moral Judgment Of Harm Transgress...mentioning

confidence: 95%

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Probing the causal contribution of reasoning to third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions

Schwartz¹,

Trémolière²

2023

Preprint

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Recent work supports the role of reasoning in third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions. In particular, reasoning may increase the weight of intention in moral judgment of accidental harm, a situation that presumably requires judges to balance considerations about the outcome endured by a victim on the one hand, and considerations about an agent’s intention to cause harm on the other hand. Three preregistered lab-based studies aimed to bring further evidence for the causal contribution of reasoning to moral judgment of harm transgressions using experimental manipulations borrowed from the reasoning literature: time pressure (Experiment 1), cognitive load (Experiment 2), priming (Experiment 3). Participants (N = 178) were presented with short fictitious scenarios in which the agent’s intention toward a potential victim (harmful or neutral intent) and the action’s outcome (victim’s injury or no harm) were manipulated. Participants then reported their moral judgment of the agent’s behavior (wrongness and deserved punishment) and their empathy toward the victim. Overall, we did not find an effect of the reasoning manipulation on judgment severity. Participants were not more severe toward accidental transgressors when reasoning was prevented. The present study does not bring further support to the idea that accounting for intention in third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions may be a cognitively costly process, and we discuss these null findings in light of the moral judgment literature.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Integrating Intention Into Moral Judgment Of Harm Transgress...mentioning

confidence: 95%

Probing the causal contribution of reasoning to third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions

Schwartz¹,

Trémolière²

2023

Preprint

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“…People who are more oriented toward deliberation are less severe toward an agent who harmed accidentally as compared to people who report being more intuitive. Furthermore, a recent study suggested that giving people the opportunity to reconsider a moral transgression after giving a first intuitive judgment led to more severe moral judgment of intentional harm and less severe moral judgment of accidental harm (Schwartz et al, 2023). In brief, these behavioral studies point to processes of different nature supporting the main components of moral judgment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The neurophysiological correlates of cognitive conflict associated with moral judgment of accidental harm transgressions: an event-related potentials study

Schwartz,

El-Yagoubi,

Cayron

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Judging someone who harmed another has been proposed to rely on distinct cognitive processes that evaluate the victim’s outcome and the intention to harm. When harm is accidental, cognitive tension may arise in judges because considerations about the victim’s harm may conflict with the examination of the perpetrator’s innocent intention. The goal of the present study was to characterize at the neural level the cognitive conflict that may be triggered by moral judgment of accidental harm. To this aim, we used electro-encephalography (EEG) while participants completed a lexical judgment task embedded in a moral judgment task. This manipulation was designed to trigger event-related potentials typically associated with conflict detection, namely the N400 component thought to originate from the anterior cingulate cortex. Participants (N = 31) listened to short scenarios featuring either an accidental or an intentional moral transgression. Each scenario was followed by a conclusion (for example, “Jake harmed Dan intentionally”) whose last word was either congruent or incongruent with the moral scenario. Participants had to judge the semantic congruency of the conclusion and sometimes had to judge how much the perpetrator should be punished. While participants were longer to judge incongruent targets, we did not characterize the expected N400. However, we observed a posterior P300 which was moderated by congruency and intention. The congruency effect on the P300 was larger for accidental relative to intentional harm scenarios, in line with the idea that processing accidental harm may require more cognitive resources to overcome a cognitive conflict between the intent-based and outcome-based processes.

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Probing the Causal Contribution of Reasoning to Third-Party Moral Judgment of Harm Transgressions

Schwartz,

Balat,

Trémolière

2024

Experimental Psychology

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Recent work has supported the role of reasoning in third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions. In particular, reasoning may increase the weight of intention in moral judgment, especially following accidental harm, a situation that presumably requires judges to balance considerations about the outcome endured by a victim on the one hand and considerations about an agent’s intention to cause harm on the other hand. Three preregistered lab-based studies aimed to test the causal contribution of reasoning to moral judgment of harm transgressions using experimental manipulations borrowed from the reasoning literature: time pressure (Experiment 1), cognitive load (Experiment 2), and priming (Experiment 3). Participants ( N = 284) were presented with short fictitious scenarios in which the agent’s intention toward a potential victim (harmful or neutral intent) and the action’s outcome (victim’s injury or no harm) were manipulated. Participants then reported their moral judgment of the agent’s behavior (wrongness and deserved punishment) and their empathy toward the victim. We found that time pressure reduced judgment severity toward agents who had the intention to harm, but the reasoning manipulations overall did not impact judgment severity toward agents who harmed accidentally. We discuss why reasoning may sometimes influence how individuals account for intention in third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions.

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The temporal dynamics of third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions: answers from a 2-response paradigm

Cited by 3 publications

References 44 publications

Probing the causal contribution of reasoning to third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions

Probing the causal contribution of reasoning to third-party moral judgment of harm transgressions

The neurophysiological correlates of cognitive conflict associated with moral judgment of accidental harm transgressions: an event-related potentials study

Probing the Causal Contribution of Reasoning to Third-Party Moral Judgment of Harm Transgressions

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