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Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions

The side-effect effect (SEE) is the observation that people’s intuition about whether an action was intentional depends on whether the outcome is good or bad. The asymmetric response, however, does not represent all subjects’ judgments (Nichols and Ulatowski, 2007). It remains unexplored on subjecti...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Liao, Yu, Sun, Yujia, Li, Hong, Deák, Gedeon O., Feng, Wenfeng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085550/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30123152
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01329
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author Liao, Yu
Sun, Yujia
Li, Hong
Deák, Gedeon O.
Feng, Wenfeng
author_facet Liao, Yu
Sun, Yujia
Li, Hong
Deák, Gedeon O.
Feng, Wenfeng
author_sort Liao, Yu
collection PubMed
description The side-effect effect (SEE) is the observation that people’s intuition about whether an action was intentional depends on whether the outcome is good or bad. The asymmetric response, however, does not represent all subjects’ judgments (Nichols and Ulatowski, 2007). It remains unexplored on subjective factors that can mediate the size of SEE. Thus, the current study investigated whether an individual related factor, specifically, whether adults’ intensity of caring about an outcome of someone’s actions influences their judgments about whether that person intended the outcome. We hypothesized that participants’ judgments about fictional agents’ responsibility for their action’s side-effects would depend on how much they care about the domain of the side-effect. In two experiments, the intensity of caring affected participants’ ascription of intention to an agent’s negative unintended side-effect. The stronger ascription of intentionality to negative than positive side-effects (i.e., the SEE; Knobe, 2003) was found only in domains in which participants reported higher levels of caring. Also, the intensity of caring increased intentionality attributions reliably for negative side-effects but not for positive side-effects. These results suggest that caring about a domain mediates an asymmetrical ascription of intentionality to negative more than positive side-effects.
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spelling pubmed-60855502018-08-17 Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions Liao, Yu Sun, Yujia Li, Hong Deák, Gedeon O. Feng, Wenfeng Front Psychol Psychology The side-effect effect (SEE) is the observation that people’s intuition about whether an action was intentional depends on whether the outcome is good or bad. The asymmetric response, however, does not represent all subjects’ judgments (Nichols and Ulatowski, 2007). It remains unexplored on subjective factors that can mediate the size of SEE. Thus, the current study investigated whether an individual related factor, specifically, whether adults’ intensity of caring about an outcome of someone’s actions influences their judgments about whether that person intended the outcome. We hypothesized that participants’ judgments about fictional agents’ responsibility for their action’s side-effects would depend on how much they care about the domain of the side-effect. In two experiments, the intensity of caring affected participants’ ascription of intention to an agent’s negative unintended side-effect. The stronger ascription of intentionality to negative than positive side-effects (i.e., the SEE; Knobe, 2003) was found only in domains in which participants reported higher levels of caring. Also, the intensity of caring increased intentionality attributions reliably for negative side-effects but not for positive side-effects. These results suggest that caring about a domain mediates an asymmetrical ascription of intentionality to negative more than positive side-effects. Frontiers Media S.A. 2018-08-03 /pmc/articles/PMC6085550/ /pubmed/30123152 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01329 Text en Copyright © 2018 Liao, Sun, Li, Deák and Feng. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Liao, Yu
Sun, Yujia
Li, Hong
Deák, Gedeon O.
Feng, Wenfeng
Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions
title Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions
title_full Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions
title_fullStr Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions
title_full_unstemmed Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions
title_short Intensity of Caring About an Action’s Side-Effect Mediates Attributions of Actor’s Intentions
title_sort intensity of caring about an action’s side-effect mediates attributions of actor’s intentions
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085550/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30123152
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01329
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