Intention, Act, and Outcome in Behavioral Prediction and Moral Judgment

72 children at 3, 4, and 5 years of age and 24 undergraduates were required to use information about intention under a normal causal system or a noncanonical one (e. g., hitting causes pleasure) to predict an agent's behavior. Additionally, they were asked to integrate intentions, acts, and out...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 1996-10, Vol.67 (5), p.2478-2492
Main Authors: Zelazo, Philip David, Helwig, Charles C., Lau, Anna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Age
Age Differences
Age groups
Behavior
Causality
Child psychology
Children
Children & youth
Control theory
Foreign Countries
Harm
Intention
Literary characters
Moral judgment
Moral judgments
Moral Values
Morality
Ontario (Toronto)
Preschool Children
Punishment
Reasoning
Role
Rules
Value Judgment
Young Adults
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:72 children at 3, 4, and 5 years of age and 24 undergraduates were required to use information about intention under a normal causal system or a noncanonical one (e. g., hitting causes pleasure) to predict an agent's behavior. Additionally, they were asked to integrate intentions, acts, and outcomes to judge an act's acceptability and assign punishment. 3-year-olds performed poorly on behavioral prediction in the noncanonical condition. Most participants at all ages made categorical judgments of act acceptability based solely on outcome, although quantitative ratings reflected an age-related increase in sensitivity to intention information. When assigning punishment, many 3-year-olds used a simple intention or outcome rule, whereas older participants were more likely to use a conjunction rule (if outcome is negative and intention is negative then punish). Together, the results reveal both an early understanding of harm and changes in the complexity of the rules that children use to predict behavior and integrate information.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.2307/1131635