The accidental transgressor: Morally-relevant theory of mind

In the paper

“As shown in Figure 1, the youngest age group judged the intentions of the actor (M = 1.62, SD = .13) and evaluated the act (M = 1.45, SD = .13) negatively (no difference).”

In the paper

“Initial analyses revealed no significant effects for gender, thus gender was not included in further analyses.”

In the paper

“As expected, there were significant changes for age, with less than a quarter of the youngest children passing the test, and the vast majority of the older children fully passing the two tasks, F (2,141) = 40.63, p < .001, η2 = .36 (Myoungest = .24, SD =.43; Mmiddle = .73, SD =.46; Moldest = .97, SD =.16).”

In the paper

“Follow-up tests revealed all groups were significantly different, ps <.01.”

In the paper

“with most participants using harm reasons (M = .40, SD = .04), about a quarter of participants using “no negative intent” (M =.25, SD = .03) and a minority of participants cited negligence (M = .11, SD = .02) for their evaluation of the accidental transgressor’s act.”

In the paper

“As expected, more participants failed the MoToM False Contents task and succeeded on the prototypic False Contents task, χ2 (1, N = 37) = 11.92, p < .01.”

In the paper

“Less than 5% of the participants used two codes.”

In the paper

“A main effect was found for Accidental Transgression, F (1,150) = 35.63, p < .001, η2 = .19, revealing that participants attributed positive intentions to the accidental transgressor (M = 2.26, SD = .08), but evaluated the act itself more negatively (M = 1.63, SD = .08).”

In the paper

“While all children evaluated the act as wrong, younger children evaluated the act as more wrong than did older children.”

In the paper

“Interaction effects were found for false belief ToM (pass, fail) by Prototypic Transgression (Intentions of the Actor, Evaluations of the Act), F (1,150) = 4.56, p < .05, η2 =.03, as well as for age by Prototypic Transgression, F (2,150) = 4.16, p < .05, η2 = .05.”

In the paper

“The middle group evaluated an accidental transgression as wrong but recognized that the target did not have negative intentions.”

In the paper

“the middle and oldest group, who had false belief theory of mind competence, differentiated the intentions of the “transgressor” (“he didn’t mean to throw it away”), viewing the intentions positively, from the transgressor’s act (“it was a bad thing to do”), but still maintained that the act itself was bad.”

In the paper

“While all children viewed pushing someone off a swing as wrong, only the older children coordinated their evaluations of the act with their attributions of intentions for the accidental transgressor in the MoToM task.”

In the paper

“References to harm decreased with age for both attributing intentions of the actor as well as evaluating the act.”

In the paper

“Unlike in the MoToM scenario, no significant differences were found for intentions of the actor (all right: M = 1.75, SD = .45, not all right: M = 1.95, SD = .23) or evaluation of the act (all right: M = 1.87, SD = .35, not all right: M = 2.00, SD = .00).”

In the paper

“A main effect for justifications was found, F (2,316) = 248.81, p < .001, η2 =.61, with the majority of participants using harm reasons (M = .63, SD = .04) and very few participants referencing negligence (M = .01, SD = .00) or “no negative intent” (M = .02, SD = .01).”

In the paper

“participants who passed false belief ToM judged the transgressor’s intentions as significantly more all right (M = 2.13, SD = .11) than participants evaluated the act to be all right (M = 1.28, SD =.09), p < .001, whereas participants who did not pass false belief ToM judged that the transgressor’s intentions (M = 1.48, SD = .16) and the act itself were similarly not all right (M = 1.23, SD = .07)”

In the paper

“Further, in Experiment 2, participants who passed false belief in a MoToM scenario judged that it was more acceptable to punish a transgressor in the moral transgression scenario than in the MoToM scenario, whereas participants who did not pass false belief in a MoToM scenario did not differentiate between the scenarios”

In the paper

“While children did not refer to negligence when discussing the actor’s intentions, with age, a minority of children referred to negligence when evaluating the act itself.”

In the paper

“As expected, the vast majority of participants who did not pass false belief in a MoToM scenario justified punishment acceptability using harm reasons (M =.73, SD = .12) while only a minority of participants who passed false belief in a MoToM scenario used harm reasons (M = .30, SD = .09).”

In the paper

“Despite this, in the present study, children with false belief theory of mind competence differentiated punishment acceptability in the MoToM condition while those without false belief theory of mind did not”

In the paper

“Virtually all participants felt that the victim would feel bad about being pushed off the swing (who passed false belief ToM, M = 1.00, SD = .01; who did not pass false belief ToM, M =.96, SD = .04) and would feel bad about the transgressor (who did not pass false belief ToM, M = 1.34, SD = .08; who passed false belief ToM, M = 1.31, SD = .06).”

In the paper

“Most centrally, children found it challenging to identify a protagonist’s false belief when it led to a moral violation, and more so than when it pertained to action predictions made outside of the moral context.”

In the paper

“A main effect for Justifications was found, F (2, 314) = 104.84, p < .001, η2 =.40, indicating that harm justifications were used most often (M = .53, SD = .04), with no use of negligence (M = .00), and almost no use of “no negative intent” (M = .09, SD = .02).”

In the paper

“While the results replicated previous studies on children’s evaluations of acts of harm towards another (“It’s wrong”), with age, children expected that the transgressor thought what he/she was doing was not wrong.”

In the paper

“As shown in Table 1, while in the MoToM condition references to harm decreased with age for the evaluation of the act, in the Prototypic condition, references to harm increased with age (see Table 1).”

In the paper

“An interaction effect was found, indicating differences in judgment between intentions and evaluation of the act, by false belief competence F (1,138) = 9.27, p < .01, η2 = .06.”

In the paper

“Additionally, our oldest participants evaluated the accidental transgression as wrong, though they did advocate for less punishment than did younger children.”

In the paper

“Thus, there was an increase in speculating that the transgressor meant to do something positive and this was related to false belief ToM competence.”

In the paper

“several decades of research on children’s “theory of mind” has documented the emergence of increasingly robust reasoning about others’ mental states during the same time period (Carpendale & Lewis, 2006; Perner, et al., 1989; Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001)”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Carpendale & Lewis, 2006
• Not checked yetcites Perner, et al., 1989 source
• Not checked yetcites Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001 source

In the paper

“Understanding the intentions of another person reflects a core aspect of moral judgment (Killen & Smetana, 2008; Turiel, 2006; Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, 1996) and theory of mind (Perner, Frith, Leslie, & Leekam, 1989; Wellman, 1990; Wellman & Liu, 2004; Woodward, Sommerville, & Guajardo, 2001).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Killen & Smetana, 2008
• Not checked yetcites Turiel, 2006
• Not checked yetcites Zelazo, Helwig, & Lau, 1996 source

In the paper

“This measure, which has served as a prototypic moral judgment assessment given its extensive empirical validation (Helwig, 1990; Killen, 2007; Nucci, 2001; Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 1998, 2008), derives from social domain theory (Turiel, 2006), and has been replicated in many countries, with cross-cultural generalizability”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Smetana, 2006
• Not checked yetcites Helwig, 1990 source
• Not checked yetcites Killen, 2007 source

In the paper

“when preschoolers are told that “child X called child Y a name” children evaluate the act as “a game” when it’s between two friends and as “acting mean” when it is between two children who are not friends (Slomkowski & Killen, 1992).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Slomkowski & Killen, 1992

In the paper

“The scale was deemed to be a valid assessment tool, as assessed by the participants’ consistency between their verbal response to the questions posed and the point on the scale which they indicated best represented their verbal response.”

In the paper

“participants who failed the memory check were excluded from analyses; 15% of the participants were excluded due to the memory check failures (all of these children were in the youngest age group; 3 – 4 year olds).”

In the paper

“This task assesses children’s ability to use a person’s belief state to predict his or subsequent actions when those beliefs differ from reality and from the child’s own knowledge.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Wimmer & Perner, 1983

In the paper

“Most developmental studies, to date, have used only one assessment for a single scenario, with some studies focused on children’s affective responses towards the target and other studies on children’s assignment of blame or punishment.”

In the paper

“The coding was conducted by two coders blind to the hypotheses of the study.”

In the paper

“while existing research has demonstrated that young children distinguish between intentions and outcomes”

In the paper

“Prior theory of mind research has not probed children’s reasons for their answers.”

In the paper

“In the prototypic false belief task, socially meaningful motives are rarely ascribed to the person who transfers the object; yet it is in ongoing peer interactions that theory of mind competence is both applied and developed (Carpendale & Lewis, 2006).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Carpendale & Lewis, 2006

In the paper

“young children think about the motives of others, assign blame when acts are intentional, and, at times, interpret intentionality from a moral perspective.”

In the paper

“Finally, and similar to the findings for “no negative intent” justifications, references to the transgressor’s negligence increased with age, indicating that the oldest children recognized the lack of negative intent while simultaneously condemning the actor.”

In the paper

“Thus, MoToM False Contents, which involved understanding the false belief of the transgressor, was more difficult than false belief ToM False Contents, whereas Location Change was equally difficult in both contexts.”

In the paper

“As predicted, with age, harm justifications decreased, indicating that participants did not evaluate the accidental transgressor’s act as a moral violation; instead, with age, participants justified their answers by referring to “no negative intent.””

In the paper

“Thus, with age, children were able to recognize the accidental nature of the transgression, but evaluated the act itself as negative.”

In the paper

“In fact, moral judgments often influence how it is that we do or do not coordinate perspectives, that is, attributions of blame or wrongdoing can determine how an individual takes perspectives of others, and the data in the present study provide support for this directionality of influence in young children.”

In the paper

“As well, these findings shed light on moral judgment findings and reveal the process by which children begin to connect acts and consequences, a central aspect of moral evaluations (Killen & Smetana, 2008; Killen & Smetana, 2006).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Killen & Smetana, 2008
• Not checked yetcites Killen & Smetana, 2006

In the paper

“Past work (Zelazo, et al., 1996) suggests that participants’ evaluations of a transgressor’s actions provide a different measure of intent than ratings of the acceptability of punishment for those actions.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Zelazo, et al., 1996 source

In the paper

“Thus, while young children at 3.5 years of age attributed negative intentions to an “accidental transgressor,” it was not until 7.5 years, 2.5 years beyond the canonical “5 year old” false belief knowledge marker, that children attributed positive intentions to the actor, that is, that the actor did not mean to throw away a desired object belonging to another child in the classroom.”

In the paper

“This is likely because children acquired false belief theory of mind with age and were thus better able to recognize the positive intentions of the transgressor, with age, in the MoToM condition. As they recognized the positive intentions in the MoToM condition, their references to harm decreased.”

In the paper

“providing an indication that their negative evaluation of the act may have focused on the transgressor’s negligence and that this focus was distinct from their moral evaluation of the transgressor’s intention.”

In the paper

“Zelazo, et al. (1996) showed that punishment acceptability is influenced by intention judgments. More specifically, with age, participants were more punitive when an actor intended to and succeeded in harming a victim than when the “transgressor’s” intentions were positive.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Zelazo, et al. (1996) source

In the paper

“Thus, while some participants judged that the transgressor in a prototypic moral transgression scenario might have had positive intentions they still believed that this transgressor should be punished for the transgression.”

In the paper

“If the outcome of an action is negative then individuals are more likely to assume that the action was done intentionally; when the outcome of an action is positive then individuals are more likely to assume that the motive behind the action was neutral.”

In the paper

“Research in social psychology, for example, has shown that stereotyping increases in ambiguous situations (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004), and research in developmental psychology has shown that attributions of intentions based on group membership are revealed in interracial peer encounters in which the intentions of the potential perpetrator are ambiguous (Killen, Kelly, Richardson, & Jampol, 2010).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004 source
• Not checked yetcites Killen, Kelly, Richardson, & Jampol, 2010

In the paper

“Adults have been shown to consider negligence in action (Finkel & Groscup, 1997; Shultz & Wright, 1985), as have children (M. J. Chandler, et al., 2001; Siegal & Peterson, 1998).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Finkel & Groscup, 1997
• Not checked yetcites Shultz & Wright, 1985
• Not checked yetcites M. J. Chandler, et al., 2001

In the paper

“RTPJ activity may indeed become more specialized with development, thus enabling the child to more thoroughly integrate different actors’ intentions when evaluating morally relevant scenarios (Saxe, et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Saxe, et al., 2009 source

In the paper

“As Saxe and her colleagues have demonstrated, in the neuroscience area, the ability to focus on intentions is potentially contingent on activation in the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction (RTPJ) (L. Young, Camprodon, Hauser, Pascual-Leone, & Saxe, 2010; L. Young, et al., 2007).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites L. Young, et al., 2010 source
• Not checked yetcites L. Young, et al., 2007 source

In the paper

“Essentially, the researchers have shown that individuals use information about the outcome of actions to make judgments about intentions.”

In the paper

“We demonstrated that applying false belief theory of mind knowledge to situations with morally relevant information is complex, and children’s ability to figure this out may have important implications for their social relationships and positive peer interactions, both of which are central to the acquisition of social knowledge and social cognition throughout development.”

In the paper

“This proposition is different from the traditional view which is that theory of mind is necessary for making a moral judgment.”

In the paper

“Research testing false belief knowledge and helping behavior has revealed that children as young as 15 months old are able to apply false belief understanding to social situations (Buttelmann, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Buttelmann, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009 source

In the paper

“Leslie, Knobe and colleagues have conducted research on the Side Effect Effect, which suggests that moral judgment may influence theory of mind in important ways (Knobe, 2005; Leslie, et al., 2006; Pettit & Knobe, 2009).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Knobe, 2005 source
• Not checked yetcites Leslie, et al., 2006 source
• Not checked yetcites Pettit & Knobe, 2009