The accidental transgressor: Morally-relevant theory of mind

In the paper

“Children who did not pass false belief ToM were more likely to attribute negative intentions to an accidental transgressor than children who passed false belief ToM, and to use moral reasons when blaming the accidental transgressor.”

In the paper

“In Experiment 2, children (N = 46) who did not pass false belief ToM viewed it as more acceptable to punish the accidental transgressor than did participants who passed false belief ToM.”

In the paper

“Children who did not pass false belief ToM were more likely to attribute negative intentions to an accidental transgressor than children who passed false belief ToM, and to use moral reasons when blaming the accidental transgressor.”

In the paper

“for Location False Belief, F (2,157) = 45.97, p < .001, η2 = .36, (Myoungest =.25, SD =.43; Mmiddle = .74, SD =.44; Moldest = .97, SD =.16).”

In the paper

“Follow-up tests indicated that the use of harm justifications decreased with age, with half of the youngest participants using harm reasons (M = .49, SD = .05), less than half of the middle group (M = .23, SD = .05) and virtually none of the oldest group using harm reasons (M = .03, SD = .06).”

In the paper

“indicating that harm justifications were used most often (M = .54, SD = .03), followed by no negative intent (M = .25, SD = .03), and negligence (M = .03, SD = .01).”

In the paper

“Specifically, follow-up tests confirmed that participants who passed false belief ToM judged the intentions of the actor as significantly more all right than did participants who did not pass false belief ToM, p < .001.”

In the paper

“analyses were conducted using the traditional assessments for false belief by excluding participants who did not pass the “own belief” check questions (n = 25) and there were no significant differences between the two samples.”

In the paper

“Similarly, the oldest age group judged the intentions of the actor (M = 3.35, SD = .16) as more all right then how they evaluated the act (M = 1.97, SD = .16).”

In the paper

“for Location Change in a morally relevant scenario, F (2,159) = 37.35, p < .001, η2 = .32, (M =.31, SD =.46; M =.76, SD =.43; M =.97, SD =.16).”

In the paper

“For the False Contents tasks, more participants were stable (i.e., more participants either failed or passed both tasks than failed only one task) than unstable in their False Contents knowledge for the two assessments, χ2 (3, N = 155) = 39.16, p < .001.”

In the paper

“Older participants viewed the transgression as more wrong than did the younger two age groups, F (2,154) = 7.35, p < .01, η2 = .08”

In the paper

“This revealed a significant false belief ToM by Accidental Transgressor interaction effect, F (1,152) = 7.99, p < .01, η2 = .05.”

In the paper

“The middle age group judged the accidental transgressor’s intentions (M = 2.35, SD = .13) as more all right than their evaluation of the act (M = 1.63, SD = .13).”

In the paper

“As expected, a justification by age interaction effect, F (4,318) = 26.21, p < .001, η2 = .24, indicated that children used different justifications with age for their attributions of intentions of the actor.”

In the paper

“all participants viewed the act as wrong (with ratings of 1 = very bad and 2 = bad), M = 1.26, SD =.55.”

In the paper

“references to negligence when justifying participants’ own evaluation of the transgressor’s act increased with age (M = .02, SD = .04; M = .14, SD = .04; M = .18 SD = .05, for ages 3.5, 5.5, 7.5, respectively).”

In the paper

“As expected, references to “no negative intent” increased with age (M = .13, SD = .05; M = .21, SD = .05; M = .41 SD = .06, for ages 3.5, 5.5, 7.5).”

In the paper

“Participants who passed false belief ToM evaluated the transgressor’s intentions as significantly more all right (M = 2.66, SD =.14) than how they themselves evaluated the act (M = 1.66, SD =.11).”

In the paper

“children who passed false belief ToM judged the intentions of the actor as more all right (M = 2.72, SD = .11) than they evaluated the act (M = 1.71, SD = .10).”

In the paper

“Participants without false belief ToM did not differ (follow-up test was not significant) in their judgment about the transgressor’s intentions (M = 1.63, SD =.13) and the act itself (M = 1.92, SD =.14).”

In the paper

“There was an increase in the use of “no negative intent” with age (M = .20 SD =.05; M = .52 SD =.05; M = .91 SD =.07, for 3.5, 5.5, and 7.5 year olds, respectively).”

In the paper

“Disconfirming our hypothesis, for the false belief ToM Location Change assessments, there were no differences in the number of participants failing only the MoToM Location Change assessment, which involved understanding the False Belief of the Victim, and those failing only the false belief ToM Location Change assessment.”

In the paper

“for Contents False Belief, F (2,157) = 32.02, p < .001, η2 = .29 (Myoungest = .44, SD = .50; Mmiddle = .87, SD =.34; Moldest = 1.00, SD =.00)”

In the paper

“A justification by age interaction effect, F (4,318) = 3.96, p < .01, η2 = .04, indicated that children used different justifications with age (see Table 1).”

In the paper

“pilot findings indicated that the oldest children were not at ceiling for correct responses in the morally relevant scenario.”

In the paper

“While children who did not pass false belief ToM judged the intentions of the actor and evaluated the act as equally all right (M = 1.56, SD = .13; M = 1.50, SD = .12, respectively)”

In the paper

“Follow-up tests revealed that the oldest age group viewed it as more wrong than the younger two age groups (no differences between the younger two groups).”

In the paper

“An interaction effect was found for age by Accidental Transgression, F (2,150) = 4.05, p < .05, η2 = .05, revealing, as expected, that, with age, participants evaluated the accidental transgressor’s intentions as well as the accidental transgression itself as more all right.”

In the paper

“Similarly, for the Location Change tasks, more participants were stable than unstable for the Location Change knowledge for the two assessments, χ2 (3, N = 160) = 88.73, p < .001.”

In the paper

“there were significant increases with age for passing the False Contents theory of mind in a morally relevant scenario, F (2,154) = 34.81, p < .001, η2 = .31, (M =.29, SD =.45; M = .67, SD =.48; M = 1.00, SD =.00)”

In the paper

“the results from Experiment 2 revealed that children who viewed the act negatively did not judge that punishment was warranted”

In the paper

“These findings demonstrated that even children who passed false belief ToM, who understood the actor’s false belief in the MoToM problem, still rated his/her actions as wrong.”

In the paper

“Not until 7.5 years of age did the participants’ act evaluations shift due to the understanding that the act was not intentional.”

In the paper

“In this study, participants made a distinction between transgressors who were aware of what they are doing (as measured in the prototypic moral transgression by pushing someone off a swing) and transgressors who were unaware of what they were doing (as measured in the MoToM task by an actor who unknowingly throws out a “hidden” cupcake in a paper bag when cleaning up the room).”

In the paper

“In this study, the age trend was in the reverse. Instead of a decrease in attributing positive emotions to a victimizer with age, as has been shown in the prior “happy victimizer” studies, here, with age, children thought that the transgressor might have had positive intentions.”

In the paper

“Children who had false belief ToM viewed the transgressor’s intentions as less wrong than did children who did not pass false belief in a MoToM scenario (who did not differentiate between their own evaluation of the act and their attributions of intentions of the actor).”

In the paper

“Harm reasons were used most often by all age groups (M = .63, SD = .06; M = .42, SD = .06; M = .55, SD =.08, for ages 3.5, 5.5, 7.5, respectively)”

In the paper

“The age interaction effect revealed that the youngest participants judged the transgressor’s intentions as less all right (M = 1.36, SD =.16) than the middle (M = 1.92, SD =.14) or oldest age group (M = 1.65, SD =.48).”

In the paper

“Results revealed no differences in the use of harm justifications across the two assessments as a function of passing or failing morally embedded false belief competence.”

In the paper

“Nonetheless, we were surprised that the 6 –8 year old group were not at ceiling on all of the measures.”

In the paper

“For participants who did have false belief ToM (passed), and similar to the MoToM findings, the intentions of the actor were evaluated as more positive (M = 2.03, SD = .12) than the evaluation of the act (M = 1.26, SD =.33).”

In the paper

“Interestingly, regardless of false belief ToM ability, the majority of all children evaluated the accidental transgression as wrong.”

In the paper

“As expected, participants who passed false belief in a MoToM scenario explained their view about punishment acceptability by citing that the transgressor had no negative intent whereas participants who did not pass false belief in a MoToM scenario never used this explanation (M= .37, SD = .10; M = .00), F (1, 43) = 8.30, p < .01, η2 = .16.”

In the paper

“The false belief ToM interaction effect revealed that participants who did not pass false belief ToM (failed) did not differ for the attributions of intentions of the actor and the moral evaluation of the act (M = 1.26, SD=.07; M = 1.24, SD = .19 for Intentions of the Actor and Evaluation of the Act, respectively).”

In the paper

“Children who lacked false belief knowledge were more likely to attribute negative intentions to an “accidental transgressor” than were children who had acquired false belief knowledge.”

In the paper

“In contrast, participants without false belief competence did not make use of no negative intent in their justifications for their judgments (M = .00; M = .00).”

In the paper

“While participants with false belief theory of mind viewed the intentions of the actor more positively than children without false belief theory of mind, they expected the victim to feel bad about the transgressor (M = 1.53, SD = .64), just as did children who did not pass false belief ToM (M = 1.34, SD = .65).”

In the paper

“What was surprising was that being able to evaluate a peer encounter which required both false belief knowledge as well as moral knowledge was difficult for all children, even those who had false belief competence as measured by the standard task.”

In the paper

“Confirming our hypothesis, punishment was viewed as very acceptable by the youngest children (Myoungest = 1.75, SD = .29), and much less acceptable by the two older age groups (Mmiddle = .80, SD = .21, Moldest = .64, SD = .25).”

In the paper

“Follow-up tests indicate that the youngest age group endorsed significantly more punishment acceptability than did the middle group (p < .05) and the oldest groups (p < .01).”

In the paper

“The significant interaction effect, F (1,27) = 4.75, p < .05, η2 = .15, indicated that participants who passed false belief judged that it was more acceptable to punish a transgressor in the moral transgression scenario (M = 1.91, SD = .10) than in the MoToM scenario (M =.69, SD = .20), whereas participants who did not pass false belief did not differentiate between the scenarios, MoToM (M = 1.45,”

In the paper

“A main effect for Prototypic Transgression was found, F (1,15l) = 4.86, p < .05, η2 = .03, revealing that participants viewed the intentions of the actor as less wrong (M = 1.64, SD = .18) than their own evaluation of the act itself (M = 1.25, SD = .10).”

In the paper

“The findings for Experiment 2 confirmed our expectations that children who passed false belief theory of mind in a MoToM scenario would view it as less acceptable to punish the accidental transgressor than did participants who did not pass false belief in a MoToM scenario.”

In the paper

“As expected, participants who responded correctly about the transgressor’s false belief viewed it as less acceptable to punish the transgressor (M = .73, SD = .16) than did participants who did not respond correctly about the transgressor’s false belief (M = 1.61, SD = .25), F (1, 31) = 7.862, p < .01, η2 = .21.”

In the paper

“Intentions of the actor were found to be significantly related to punishment acceptability F (1,34) = 5.91, p < .05, η2 = .16, with participants who judged the transgressor’s intentions as not all right advocating for significantly more punishment (M = 1.38, SD = .21) than did participants who judged the transgressor’s intentions as all right (M = .65, SD = .18).”

In the paper

“With age, children used different justifications to explain their judgments about the intentions of an accidental transgressor and their evaluations of the act.”

In the paper

“In the MoToM Scenario, virtually all participants judged that the victim would feel bad about losing the cupcake (with MoToM False Contents, M = 1.00, SD = .00; without MoToM False Contents, M =.94, SD = .25).”

In the paper

“Thus, while children who lacked false belief competence were more likely to evaluate the act (throwing the cupcake into the trash) and the intentions of the actor (what did the classroom helper intend to do?) negatively”

In the paper

“More specifically, participants who passed false belief ToM judged the intentions of the actor as significantly more all right than did participants who did not pass false belief ToM.”

In the paper

“Older children referred to the absence of negative intentions when discussing the accidental transgressor’s motives as well as when evaluating the act itself.”

In the paper

“This was indicated by the finding that children who passed the false contents assessment (did he/she know what was in the bag/box?) in the standard false belief ToM task were less likely to pass it in the MoToM task, which involved a transgressor.”

In the paper

“In contrast to attributions of intent, participants advocated for similar degrees of punishment regardless of how participants evaluated the act (all right: M = .80, SD = .38, not all right: M = 1.00, SD = .15).”

In the paper

“This finding was confirmed when the analyses focused on presence or absence of false belief ToM competence; children who passed false belief ToM attributed more positive intentions to the actor than did children who did not pass false belief ToM (controlling for age).”

In the paper

“In contrast to the age related decrease in attribution of negative intention, older children judged the act to be less all right (M =1.00, SD =.27) than did either of the two younger age groups (age 3.5: M = 1.40, SD =.09; age 5.5 M = 1.35, SD = .08), ps < .001.”

In the paper

“Participants with false belief competence more frequently cited no negative intent when justifying punishment acceptability judgments than when justifying their evaluation of the act (justification, act evaluation: M = .15, SD = .35; justification, punishment acceptability M = .37, SD = .49).”

In the paper

“Children who passed the location change assessment (did he/she know where to look for the cupcake/markers?) in the standard false belief ToM task, however, also did so in the MoToM Task, which involved a victim.”

In the paper

“Overall, participants’ evaluations of the transgressors’ actions were linked to their ability to keep in mind what it is that the transgressor knows.”

In the paper

“children 5 to 7 years old rated intentional acts as “more bad” than accidental acts.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Carpendale & Chandler, 1996
• Not checked yetcites M. J. Chandler, Sokol, & Hallett, 2001

In the paper

“The foci of the studies differ but converge on the overall expectation that theory of mind and moral judgment are interrelated.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Astington, 2004 source
• Not checked yetcites M.J. Chandler, Sokol, & Wainryb, 2000
• Not checked yetcites Knobe, 2005 source

In the paper

“3 – 7 year olds judged that recipients judged a bad outcome (harm) to be the result of an intentional rather than accidental action”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Yuill & Perner, 1988 source

In the paper

“researchers in the field of moral development have demonstrated how young children, as early as 3 and 4 years of age, evaluate moral transgressions on the basis of the negative intrinsic consequences to others rather than on external consequences such as teacher mandates or punishment (Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 2006).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Smetana, 2006
• Not checked yetcites Turiel, 2006

In the paper

“children’s moral decisions regarding attributions of blame influence their interpretations of other’s intentions (theory of mind).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Leslie, et al., 2006 source

In the paper

“children would assign more blame when an act was intentional rather than accidental (Yuill & Perner, 1988).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Yuill & Perner, 1988 source

In the paper

“What is lacking is a multi-measure approach in which prototypic moral judgment and false belief tasks are administered along with an embedded morally –relevant false belief theory of mind task in a single study.”

In the paper

“the connections documented, to date, are rather global”

In the paper

“Yet the relationship between individuals in social situations has been shown to be significantly related to young children’s evaluations of acts.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Slomkowski & Killen, 1992

In the paper

“Additionally, the recognition that the transgressor did not have negative intentions increased with age, as predicted.”

In the paper

“one of the most frequent source of interpersonal conflicts among children has to do with the misattribution of intentions (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Zelazo, et al., 1996).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Crick & Dodge, 1994 source
• Not checked yetcites Zelazo, et al., 1996 source

In the paper

“revealed, similar to the age-related finding, that even children who passed false belief ToM evaluated the act to be wrong, despite their knowledge of the accidental nature of the transgression.”

In the paper

“accumulated research with adults has revealed a strong relationship between theory of mind competence and moral judgment (Knobe, 2005; Pettit & Knobe, 2009)”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Knobe, 2005 source
• Not checked yetcites Pettit & Knobe, 2009

In the paper

“In sum, participants who evaluated the act from their own viewpoint used harm justifications most often, reflecting their concern with the harm caused by the transgression, even if it was accidental.”

In the paper

“Even so, it is clear that this task remains relevant to the measurement of the child’s ability to recruit false belief information to reason about explicit scenarios involving intentionality (Wellman & Liu, 2004).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Wellman & Liu, 2004 source

In the paper

“recent neuroscience research has examined the neural underpinnings between mental state attribution and moral evaluations in accidental transgression scenarios and has revealed a well-specified region of the brain that is integral to intent attribution during act evaluation (Liane Young & Saxe, 2009).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Liane Young & Saxe, 2009

In the paper

“On the basis of 25% of the interviews (N = 150 data points), inter-rater reliability was high, with Cohen’s κ = .85.”

In the paper

“Recent findings with infants (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005) and young children (Friedman & Leslie, 2005), however, have cast doubt on this strong conclusion about onset.”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005 source
• Not checked yetcites Friedman & Leslie, 2005

In the paper

“Typically, children younger than 4 – 5 years of age fail this task, predicting the person’s actions based on reality rather than the person’s false belief (Wellman, et al., 2001).”

What the sources say

• Not checked yetcites Wellman, et al., 2001 source

In the paper

“Thus, these results indicated that participants’ false belief theory of mind knowledge was stable across contexts.”

In the paper

“While the false belief task has revealed much about children’s judgments of intentionality, the task itself does not require one to consider social relationships and social information, which are reflected in actual situations in which judgments of intentionality are made by children in their daily interactions.”

In the paper

“These findings provide insight into why it is that children may often have conflicts in peer exchanges that involve ambiguity about intentions.”

In the paper

“suggesting that false belief theory of mind competence aided children’s ability to make moral judgments.”

In the paper

“Thus, younger children interpreted an “accidental transgression” as a “prototypic moral transgression” in which the negative intentions and outcomes were clear and unambiguous.”

In the paper

“revealing that the transgressors in these situations were not viewed as the same by children who passed false belief in a MoToM scenario.”

In the paper

“This is because children view punishment as more acceptable when a transgression has negative rather than neutral (or positive) intentions (Nobes, et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

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

In the paper

“Even in situations where there is a prototypic, clear-cut transgression, false belief theory of mind skill played a role in evaluating intentions.”

In the paper

“Our findings indicate that weighing intentions involves integrating diverse forms of information.”

In the paper

“With age, children’s attributions of positive intentions of the actor increased.”

In the paper

“Additionally, new research has also shown that when children are given information about outcome, intentions and negligence, that they are influenced strongly by intentions in making punishment judgments (Nobes, et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

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

In the paper

“When children do not coordinate their evaluations of acts with their attributions of intentions then they are likely to blame a peer for wrongdoing in a situation in which there was an absence of negative intentions.”

In the paper

“Thus, though the prototypic moral transgression was judged as wrong by all participants, false belief ToM skill seems to enable participants to consider possible reasons why a transgressor may have committed a transgression and to look for positive intentions, even in actions where the intention appears quite negative.”

In the paper

“While the accidental transgressor in the MoToM scenario does not have foreknowledge of the outcome, as do the actors in the above described research, the conflict for children between understanding that the accidental transgressor’s intentions were positive, but still identifying the act as wrong, suggests that false belief competence may not be enough for full moral judgments.”

In the paper

“Additionally, recent research suggests that children and adults do use information about an actor’s negligence in making moral judgments and assessments of punishment acceptability (Nobes, et al., 2009).”

What the sources say

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