Development processes in social inference: averaging of intentions and consequences in moral judgment

Abstract

Two experiments tested the applicability of Anderson's relative-weight averaging model to children's judgments based on intentions and consequences. Experiment 1 provided support for the model over a wide age range (kindergarten through adult) using stimuli similar to Piaget's in which the intentions ranged from positive to negative and the consequences ranged from neutral to negative. Experiment 2 extended Experiment 1 by including consequences ranging from positive to nega-tive. In Experiment 2, intentions and consequences interacted suggesting that some modification of the assumptions of the averaging model is necessary to fully account for the data. Data from the two experiments suggest that both intentions and consequences influence judgments at all ages examined and that developmental changes in moral judgments are continuous rather than stagelike. These develop-mental differences can best be described by changes in the weights of intentions and consequences. The major developmental change appears to be a decrease in the weight of consequences with increasing age. The possibility of using algebraic models to describe the results of studies that have attempted to influence the relative importance of intentions and consequences in children's moral judgments is discussed. A major issue in studies of children's moral judgment has been the extent to which children of different ages use intention and outcome information in judging another's deeds. Piaget (1965) proposed that…