Exploring The Knobe Effect And It's Underlying Mechanism

Judgment of intentionality is a necessary process in the social interactions. When the Knobe effect (Knobe,2003) demonstrated the effect of moral valence on the intentionality judgment, we realized the concept of intentionality and the judgment of intentionality was more complicated than we thought. The Knobe effect refers to the phenomenon that the moral evaluations of the side-effect influence people's judgment of intentionality. When the side-effect is morally good, people tend to judge the agent bring about it unintentionally. However, when the side-effect is morally bad, people tend to judge the agent as intentionally. The existing researches have confirmed the robustness of the effect among various situations. Here we conducted 3 studies to explore the mechanism underlying the Knobe effect.Study 1 showed there was also an asymmetry of intentionality judgment among Chinese participants. Individuals preferred to ascribe intentionality to the agent when the side-effect was morally negative.Study 2 tried to explore the effect of valence on the intentionality judgment with a design of 2 (belief)×2 (desire)×2 (valence). The results showed people's intentionality judgment was significantly dependent on the agent's belief and desire. And the valence had a moderate effect on the relation between the agent's desire and the observer's intentionality judgment.Study 3 explored the role of social obligation in the Knobe effect. We found that the fact of actor's violation of social norms would provide some evidence for the observer. For the negative behavior, the observer's perceived social obligation of the agent can significantly predict the intentionality ascribed to the agent.