Asymmetric Effects Of Behavioral Intent-Outcome On Moral Blame And Praise

People often give their own moral evaluation to various social events,praising pro-social behaviors such as donations and condemning illegal behaviors such as theft,but when there are "inadvertent mistakes" and "inadvertent willows",these behavioral intentions However,when there is an inconsistency between the intention and the actual result of the behavior,people’s moral evaluation seems to become different.In the case of "inadvertent mistakes",people tend to take into account the neutral intention of "inadvertence" of others and do not blame them,but in the case of "inadvertent acts",how do they evaluate them? What kind of moral evaluation do people make of "unintentional" behavior? According to the dual-process theory of moral judgment,intention and outcome are important influences in the process of moral evaluation.Numerous studies have confirmed the primacy of behavioral intentions in the process of moral blame,but because of the many asymmetries between blame and praise,it remains to be explored whether this primacy is also present in the process of moral praise.The present study designed six studies to explore the asymmetric influence of intention-outcome on blame and praise.Studies1 a and 1b verified the existence of asymmetry in the influence of intention-outcome on moral blame and praise;studies 2a and 2b explored the asymmetric influence of intention-outcome on moral blame and praise from a self-other perspective by changing judgmental perspectives;studies 3a and 3b added the outcome degree variable to explore how different outcome degrees and perspective differences moderated the asymmetric influence of intention-outcome on moral blame and praise based on study 2.The asymmetric effects of intention-outcome on moral blame and praise were explored in Studies 3a and 3b.The results found that(1)during moral blame,people placed more importance on the intention factor;during moral praise,there was no intention or outcome bias.(2)Under the others/self-perspective,people both made more intention-based moral blame;under the self-perspective,people made more outcome-based moral praise.(3)When the degree of outcome is mild,under the others/self-perspective,people both make more intention-based moral blame;when the degree of outcome is severe,under the others perspective,there is no intention or outcome tendency in the process of moral blame,and under the self-perspective,people make more outcome-based moral blame;when the degree of outcome is mild,under the others perspective,there is no intention or outcome tendency in the process of moral praise,and under the self-perspective,people made more outcome-based moral praise,and when the degree of outcome was severe,people made more outcome-based praise evaluations regardless of perspective differences.The above results indicate that blame evaluations are more intentionally oriented and praise evaluations are relatively more outcome oriented;the influence of intentional factors is greater under the others’ perspective and the influence of outcome factors is relatively increased under the self-perspective;the influence of intentional factors is greater when the degree of outcome is mild and the influence of outcome factors is significantly increased when the degree of outcome is severe.Using the intention-outcome moral judgment task paradigm,this study revealed the asymmetric influence of intention and outcome on moral blame and moral praise,to which two variables,perspective difference and degree of outcome,were added,and other factors affecting this intention-outcome asymmetry were found,enriching moral judgment research.In addition,the use of experimental materials developed by ourselves and combined with the social events that are hotly debated in the current epidemic,which makes the story situations in the materials more relevant to domestic reality and can provide explanations for some phenomena in life.