intention, act, and outcome in behavioral prediction and moral judgment

Intention, Act, and Outcome in BehavioralPrediction and Moral Judgment

Philip David Zelazo, Charles C. Helwig, and Anna LauUniversity of Toronto

ZELAZO, PHILIP DAVID; HELWIG, CHARLES C ; and LAU, ANNA. Intention, Act, and Outcome inBehavioral Prediction and Moral Judgment. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1996,67,2478-2492. 72 childrenat 3,4, and 5 years of age and 24 undergraduates were required to use information about intentionunder a normal causal system or a noncanonical one (e.g., hitting causes pleasure) to predict anagent's behavior. Additionally, they were asked to integrate intentions, acts, and outcomes tojudge an act's acceptability and assign punishment. 3-year-olds performed poorly on behavioralprediction in the noncanonical condition. Most participants at all ages made categorical judg-ments of act acceptability based solely on outcome, although quantitative ratings reflected anage-related increase in sensitivity to intention information. When assigning punishment, many3-year-olds used a simple intention or outcome rule, whereas older participants were more likelyto 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 therules that children use to predict behavior and integrate information.

A large body of researcb on social rea-soning has demonstrated that, by the pre-school years, children differentiate moralacts involving harm and unfairness from so-cial conventions, judging the former to beindependent of external authority, punish-ment, and explicit sanctions (Nucci & Tu-riel, 1978; Smetana, 1981, 1985; Smetana &Braeges, 1990; Smetana, Kelly, & Twen-tyman, 1984). For example, in a study bySmetana and Braeges (1990), childrenjudged the permissibility, seriousness, gen-eralizability, and rule and authority contin-gency of both moral and conventional trans-gressions. In addition, these children ratedthe amount of punishment that the transgres-sors deserved. Older children (42 months)distinguished moral and conventional actson all criteria, whereas the youngest chil-dren (24 months) did not distinguish theseacts on any of the criteria. The intermediateage group (34 months) judged moral trans-gressions to be more generalizably wrong(i.e., wrong across social contexts) tban so-cial conventional transgressions, althoughthey did not distinguish these acts on anyother dimension.

Although these findings suggest thatchildren have begun to formulate a distinctdomain of moral judgment by the end of thethird year of life, the basis for children'sjudgments that moral acts are wrong acrosssocial contexts remains largely unexplored.Justifications are commonly used to addressthis question in research with older partici-pants (Turiel, 1983), but heavily language-based techniques are not feasible witbyoung prescboolers. Researchers workingfrom what has come to be known as a socialdomain perspective (Smetana & Braeges,1990; Turiel, Killen, & Helwig, 1987) haveproposed that young children abstract outproperties of events to form distinctionsbetween moral, personal, and social-conventional domains of social judgment. Inthe case of the moral domain, this view leadsto certain expectations about the relationsbetween what have been called the substan-tive features of moral concepts (e.g., harm)and the formal criteria (e.g., generalizability)proposed jointly to comprise the moral do-main (Helwig, Tisak, & Turiel, 1990; Turiel,1989). One expectation is that childrenshould use the concept of harm to evaluate

The research reported herein was supported by a grant from NSERC of Canada to P. D.Zelazo and a grant from SSHRC of Canada to C. Helwig. A. Lau is now at the Department ofPsychology, UCLA. The authors would like to thank Doug Frye, Karen Li, David Moshman,Steve Reznick, Elliot Turiel, and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments on anearlier draft of the article. Please send correspondence to P. D. Zelazo or C. C. Helwig, Depart-ment of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3 (e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]).

[Child Development, 1996,67,2478-2492. © 1996 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.All rights reserved. 0009-3920/96/6705-0036$01.00]

Zelazo, Helwig, and Lau 2479

acts either before, or at the same time that,they treat moral acts as generalizable acrosscontexts. If judgments of generalizability oc-curred before children used harm to guidethe evaluation of acts, this would point toother origins of early domain distinctions.An alternative account, for example, mightpropose that the existence of an invariant as-sociation between specific acts, like hitting,and punishment or adult sanctions leads tothe judgment that these acts exclusively arewrong across social contexts, unlike otheracts. This alternative account would allowfor the finding that children distinguish cer-tain acts (labeled as moral) according to a setof formal criteria prior to learning, tbroughmodeling or some other social communica-tion mechanism, that harm is the basis ofadult sanctions regarding moral acts (see Ed-wards, 1987).

Because moral acts have intrinsic conse-quences (Turiel, 1983), it is extremely diffi-cult to test these alternative explanations ofearly moral judgments. Indeed, it is impossi-ble, under normal circumstances, to dissoci-ate acts (e.g., hitting) from their outcomes(e.g., harm) in order to test the hypothesis(Turiel et al., 1987) that concepts of harmunderlie moral judgments in the preschoolyears. However, it should be possible to de-tennine the basis of young children's moraljudgments by creating hypothetical eventsin which the normal relations between actsand outcomes are altered or reversed. If cbil-dren's judgments about moral acts such ashitting stem from an appreciation of theharm that these acts cause, and are not sim-ply due to a negative association betweenexternal sanctions and the act itself, thenyoung children should judge it to be accept-able to bit under circumstances wbere hit-ting leads to a positive consequence (plea-sure). Likewise, they should judge it to beunacceptable to engage in a normally ac-ceptable act (e.g., petting an animal) whenthis act leads to harm. Exploration of youngchildren's reasoning in these situations ofnoncanonical causality may therefore pro-vide important information about the fea-tures of acts to which young children are re-sponsive.

The current study used a normal and anoncanonical causal system (e.g., hittingcauses pleasure) to examine preschoolers'and adults' ability to use information aboutintentions, acts, and outcomes to make be-havioral predictions and moral judgments.Reasoning about two acts (hitting vs. pettinghypothetical animals), committed by an

agent under different circumstances, was ex-amined. The circumstances differed in theagent's intention (benevolent vs. malevo-lent), the nature of the causal relation be-tween the act and its associated outcome(normal vs. noncanonical), and the outcomeitself (harmful vs. beneficial). Invented ani-mals were used in order to provide a plausi-ble context for the noncanonical causal rela-tions. In the normal condition, the animal"feels good and smiles" when petted and"gets hurt and cries" when hit. In the nonca-nonical condition, however, the animal"gets hurt and cries" when petted and "feelsgood and smiles" when hit. The use of anoncanonical condition allowed us first todetermine whether children were able toconsider botb act-outcome relations and in-tentions in order to predict an agent's act,and second, to determine the extent towhich children's moral evaluations are in-fluenced by outcomes independent of acts.In accordance with social domain perspec-tives on the construction of moral judgments(Turiel et al., 1987), it was expected thateven the youngest children (3-year-olds)would use outcome information to evaluateacts in the noncanonical condition, indicat-ing that early moral judgments are orientedtoward the moral features of acts (e.g., harm)rather than the acts themselves.

Recent research on moral judgment hasshown that, contrary to traditional develop-mental accounts (e.g., Piaget, 1932), youngchildren take intentions into account injudging moral agents, especially when lev-els of outcome and intention are not con-founded and when information about inten-tions is made explicit and salient (Farnill,1974; Keasey, 1978; Leon, 1980; Nelson,1980; Nelson-LeCall, 1985; Yuill, 1984).The earliest age at which intentions-basedmoral judgment bas been found is 3 years; ina study by Nelson (1980), 3-year-olds judgedwell-intentioned actors more favorably tbanill-intentioned actors regardless of the con-sequences. Intentions-based moral judg-ment has also been found in 3y2-year-olds byYuill (1984) and in somewhat older pre-schoolers in many other studies (e.g., Berndt& Berndt, 1975; Feldman, Klosson, Parsons,Rholes, & Ruble, 1976; Moran & O'Brien,1983; Shultz, Wright, & Schleifer, 1986;Surber, 1977; Wellman, Larkey, & Somer-ville, 1979). Although these studies demon-strate that young children can use informa-tion about intentions in moral judgments,tbere is ample evidence that intentions be-come more important and are weighted

2480 Child Development

more heavily with age (Buchanon & Thomp-son, 1973; Costanzo, Coie, Grumet, & Far-nill, 1973; Gutkin, 1972; Hebble, 1971; Hel-wig, Hildebrandt, & Turiel, 1995; Leon,1980; Surber, 1977). In the current study, itwas therefore expected that older childrenand adults would make greater use of inten-tion information in their moral judgmentsthan would younger children.

Age-related changes in moral reasoningare likely to be constrained by more generalchanges in cognitive functioning. Accord-ingly, the present study draws upon researchon rule use and information integration tomake predictions about the characteristics ofchildren's reasoning at different ages. Al-though there is evidence that young chil-dren can use information about intentionsand outcomes, it was expected that the si-multaneous presentation of multiple types ofinformation would increase the complexityof the rules required to predict behavior andto make moral judgments. When varioustypes of information must be coordinated,young preschoolers appear to focus exclu-sively on one dimension (intentions or out-comes), whereas older preschoolers oftencombine this information (Nelson, 1980;Surber, 1977; Yuill, 1984). Similar changeshave been found in other domains, and it hasbeen suggested that increased informationintegration instantiates a general develop-mental trend (e.g., Anderson & Cuneo, 1978;Kun, Parsons, & Ruble, 1974; Zelazo &Shultz, 1989).

Integration rules are equivalent to thesimultaneous use of two pairs of explicitrules, which has been postulated to emergeat about 5 years of age as part of tbe develop-ment of deliberate reasoning structures (Zel-azo & Frye, in press). According to this ap-proach, called the Cognitive Complexity andControl Theory, 3-year-olds can use a pair ofrules, but they cannot use a higher-orderrule to determine which of two incompatiblepairs of rules to use. For example, they cansort cards by color (blue here, red there) orby shape (rabbits here, boats there), but tbeycannot switch fiexibly from sorting by colorto sorting by shape. To switch, children mustuse a higher-order rule that permits themfirst to determine which dimension to useand then to determine which card is pre-sented. By about 4 years of age, children canuse a higher-order rule to select betweenrule pairs (inhibiting color while usingshape). Acquisition of the ability to use ahigher-order rule corresponds to an impor-tant increase in the complexity of children's

rule systems (where complexity is measuredby the degree of embedding in the systems).Further increases in rule use occur withinage-related constraints on complexity. Forexample, it is not until 5 years of age thatchildren first acquire the ability to combinetwo pairs of rules and use them simulta-neously or in rapid succession (as in a matrixclassification task; see Frye, Zelazo, & Pal-fai, 1995, Exp. 3; Inhelder & Piaget, 1964;Roberts & Fischer, 1979). The CognitiveComplexity and Control Theory accounts forage-related changes in reasoning in a varietyof domains (e.g.. Das Gupta & Bryant, 1989;Diamond, Towle, & Boyer, 1994; Frye et al.,1995; Frye, Zelazo, Brooks, & Samuels,1996; Kendler, Kendler, & Wells, 1960; Kes-sen & Kessen, 1961; Rudy, Keith, &Georgen, 1993; Russell, Mauthner, Sharpe,& Tidswell, 1991; Zelazo, Frye, & Rapus,1996; Zelazo & Reznick, 1991; Zelazo, Rez-nick, & Pifion, 1995).

The Cognitive Complexity and ControlTheory predicts that children's use of infor-mation about intentions, acts, and outcomeswill be constrained by more general devel-opments in rule use. Specifically, children'sability to make behavioral predictions in thenoncanonical causality condition will beconstrained by their inability to use higher-order rules. In this condition, children mustswitch from their usual representation of thecanonical relation between hitting andharm, and reason from a confiicting perspec-tive where hitting leads to pleasure. Becausethey are required first to consider the systemof causality and then to take into account theintentions of the actor (either benevolent ormalevolent) before making the behavioralprediction, this condition involves the useof a higher-order rule: If X, then if Y, thenZ. Thus, it was expected that 3-year-olds, butnot 4- and 5-year-olds, would have difficultycoordinating information about intentionsand act-outcome relations in order to makecorrect behavioral predictions. The act-outcome relation can be ignored in the nor-mal condition, so a single pair of rules (ifintention is positive then pet; if intention isnegative then hit) will suffice. Thus, the the-ory makes the prediction that 3-year-olds,who are restricted to the use of a simple pairof rules, will make accurate behavioral pre-dictions in the normal, but not the nonca-nonical, causality condition.

Similarly, the theory predicts that 3-year-olds will differ from 5-year-olds andfrom adults in act evaluations where olderchildren and adults sometimes or typically

use an integration rule, such as in the assign-ment of punishment. Three-year-olds willbe restricted to the use of simple rules suchas an outcome rule (if outcome is negativethen punish; if outcome is positive do notpunish) or an intention rule (if intention isnegative then punish; if intention is positivedo not punish). They will not be able to usean integration rule such as a conjunction rule(if outcome is negative and intention is neg-ative, then punish; otherwise do not punish),which requires the simultaneous consider-ation of two dimensions and ought flrst toemerge at about 5 years of age or soon sifter(e.g., Frye et al., 1995, Exp. 3; Roberts &Fischer, 1979).

Order of presentation of intentions andconsequence information has been found toaffect moral judgments in other research (seeBCamiol, 1978; Keasey, 1978). Thus, order ofpresentation of all relevant information inthe present study (e.g., positive intentionsvs. negative intentions) was systematicallycounterbalanced. Moreover, due to discrep-ancies in flndings based on different mea-sures, Keasey (1978) has recommended thatstudies use more than one index of moraljudgment. This recommendation appears tohave gone largely unheeded in subsequentresearch, but the present study included as-sessments of qualitative and quantitativejudgments of both act acceptability and pun-ishment. Qualitative judgments (e.g.. Was itokay for X to Y?) are useful for providinggeneral information about the features thatare most important in determining evalua-tions, while quantitative measures providedirect information about the relative weightof different pieces of information in judg-ments (Buchanon & Thompson, 1973;Surber, 1977) and may be more sensitive tothe influence of multiple types of informa-tion. Two types of moral judgment (act ac-ceptability and punishment) were includedbecause the rules that are used to makethese judgments may differ. Finally, in orderto ensure comprehension of all relevant in-formation, including agents' intentions andthe nature of the noncanonical causal rela-tions, pictures similar to those employed byother researcbers (Nelson, 1980) were used,in conjunction with multiple comprehensionprobes and criterial comprehension ques-tions for each piece of essential information.

MethodParticipants

Participants included 24 children ateach of three ages, 3 years (M = 41.4


months; range = 35-48 months), 4 years (M= 54.0 months; range = 48—60 months), and5 years (M = 65.9 months; range = 61—71months), and 24 University of Toronto un-dergraduates (M = 23 years; range = 18-32years). The children were recruited throughlocal day-care centers, and the students re-ceived course credit for their participation.Participants were predominantly European-American and tended to come from middle-class backgrounds. Roughly half (49 out of96; 51%) ofthe participants were male. Two3-year-old girls refused to complete thestudy and were replaced.

Design and OverviewHalf of the participants at each age were

randomly assigned to the normal causalitycondition, and half were assigned to the non-canonical condition. A between-subjects ma-nipulation was employed in order to mini-mize potential confusion about the causalrelations between particular acts and out-comes. For each causality condition, therewere four different scenarios that presenteddifferent combinations of intention (nice vs.mean), act (pets vs. hits), and outcome(smiles vs. cries; see Table 1). Tbe four sce-narios for the normal causality condition in-cluded the same agents and acts as the corre-sponding scenarios for the noncanonicalcondition. Each agent was always associatedwith a particular intention and act. The out-come depended on the relation between actand the causality condition. For example,Sally (who is nice) hits the animal in bothcases. In tbe normal causality condition, thedax cries when she hits it, whereas in thenoncanonical condition, the mugwumpsmiles when she hits it. Acts and outcomeswere crossed within each causality condi-tion by designing scenarios in which the ani-mal was responsible for effecting a particularoutcome. For example, when Sally (who isnice) tries to pet the dax (in the normal cau-sality condition), the dax jumps up, and sheends up hitting it by mistake. By attributingthe cause ofthe outcome to the patient (i.e.,the animal) rather than to the agent, we haveendeavored to keep the agent's intention asclear and as unambiguous as possible. Allscenarios were closely matched in narrativestructure and wording (see Appendix for ex-amples of a normal and noncanonical sce-nario), and the order in which the scenarios,and thus information about intentions, acts,and outcomes, were presented was counter-balanced.

For each scenario, participants wereasked several comprehension probe ques-


TABLE 1

FOUR SCENARIOS PER CAUSALITY CONDITION INVOLVING DIFFERENT COMBINATIONSOF INTENTION, ACT, AND OUTCOME

CAUSALITY

AGENT (Intention, Act) Normal (Outcome)

Tommy (nice, pets) Scenario 1 (smiles)Anne (mean, pets) Scenario 2 (smiles)Sally (nice, hits) Scenario 3 (cries)Peter (mean, hits) Scenario 4 (cries)

Noncanonical (Outcome)

Scenario 1 (cries)Scenario 2 (cries)Scenario 3 (smiles)Scenario 4 (smiles)

tions designed to assess whether they under-stood the important details and could re-member them. They were then asked threecriterial confirmation questions immediatelyprior to being asked three types of test ques-tion: a behavioral prediction question, twoact acceptability questions (qualitative andquantitative), and two punishment questions(qualitative and quantitative). In total, foreach of the four scenarios, participants wereasked four preliminary comprehensionquestions, three criterial confirmation ques-tions, and five test questions, all of whichwere presented in a fixed order. The use ofa fixed order within scenarios was necessi-tated by tbe logical relations among thequestions and the narrative structure of thescenarios (e.g., prediction of the act neces-sarily preceded retrospective evaluations ofthe act).

ProcedurePcirticipants were interviewed individu-

ally in sessions that lasted about 15 min. Theprocedure was the same for children and foradults, except that at the beginning of thesession, adults were told that they would beasked a series of questions in exactly thesame way that preschool children would beasked the questions, and so answers to someof the questions would seem obvious. Priorto testing, all participants were familiarizedwith the act acceptability rating scale, whichconsisted of an array of five colored faces ona 21.5 X 28 cm card. From left to right, thefaces ranged from very sad (deep red with asevere frown) to very happy (bright yellowwith a marked smile). Participants were toldthat the face on the far left meant "really,really bad," the next face was "just a littlebad," and tbe middle face was "just okay."Tbe faces to the right of center were thendescribed as "just a little good" and "really,really good." T his 5-point scale includes twolevels of discrimination (a little vs. a lot) intwo directions (positive and negative), with

a neutral midpoint. It can be thought of, ineffect, as two 3-point scales combined. Thus,affer making a judgment (positive or nega-tive), children only needed to discriminateamong two levels of degree. After beingshown the act acceptability rating scale, par-ticipants were asked a few questions to en-sure that they understood the scale andcould use it appropriately.

The scale was then set aside and the ex-perimenter proceeded to tell participantsthe first of four stories that were each illus-trated using six 21.5 x 28 cm laminated col-ored drawings. In each story, a child charac-ter was introduced and participants weretold that the child's parents returned fromtheir vacation with a special kind of animal.In the normal causality condition, the animal"gets hurt and cries" when hit and "feelsgood and smiles" when petted. In the nonca-nonical causality condition, however, the an-imal "gets hurt and cries" when petted and"feels good and smiles" when hit Immedi-ately after being told the act-outcome rela-tions, participants were asked to state theoutcome of hitting and the outcome of pet-ting the animal. If participants answered ei-ther of these questions incorrectly, theywere told the correct answer.

After the first two comprehension ques-tions, the character's intention was stated ex-plicitly. In two of the stories that participantsreceived, the character was described asmean, and it was stated explicitly tbat thecharacter wanted to hurt the animal. In theother two stories, the character was de-scribed as nice, and it was stated tbat thecharacter wanted to make the animal feelgood. Participants were then asked whetherthe character was mean or nice, and whetherthe character wanted to hurt anyone. If par-ticipants answered either of these final com-prehension questions incorrectly, they werecorrected as above.

At this point, participants were askedthree criterial confirmation questions in suc-cession: (1) "Now, what does a (e.g.,a miugwump) do when you hit it?" (2) "Andwhat does it do when you pet it?" (3) "Andis [e.g., Sally] mean or nice?" Thesequestions were criterial in the sense thatchildren were required to answer all threeof the questions correctly in order for theirresponses to the subsequent test questionsto be included in the analysis (see Results).As with the previous comprehension ques-tions, participants were told whether or notthey answered the three criterial confirma-tion questions correctly.

Immediately after the confirmationquestions, participants were asked the be-havioral prediction question. This questionrequired participants to predict the charac-ter's act based on the character's intentionand the stated causal system. For example,for the story involving Sally, who is nice, inthe noncanonical causal condition, the ques-tion was phrased as follows: "Now, Sallyknows that mugwumps are weird. Sheknows that a mugwump cries when you petit and smiles when you hit it. What is Sallygoing to do?"

After participants answered this ques-tion, they were told the predetermined out-come (see Table 1 and Appendix). Tben,they were asked the act acceptability ques-tions. First, they were asked the qualitativequestion, "Is it okay for [e.g., her]to [e.g., hit] the [e.g., mug-wump]?" If participants responded that itwas okay, then they were asked, "How goodis it to [e.g., hit] the [e.g., mug-wump] ? Is it really, really good or just a littlegood or just okay?" and they were then pre-sented with five colored faces that rangedfrom very sad to very happy (the act accept-ability rating scale). They were required topoint to one of the five faces (the quantita-tive act acceptability question). Likewise, ifparidcipants answered tbe qualitative ques-tion by saying tbat it was not okay, tben theywere asked, "How bad is it to [e.g.,hit] the [e.g., mugwump]? Is it really,really bad or just a little bad?" and they werethen given the act acceptability rating scale.Responses to the quantitative act acceptabil-ity question were scored as integers from 1(really, really bad) to 5 (really, really good).

The punishment questions followed theact acceptability questions. First, partici-pants were asked, "Sbould [e.g.,Sally] get in trouble?" If they answered this


qualitative question affirmatively, then theywere asked the quantitative question: "A lit-tle trouble or a lot of trouble?" Responses tothis questions were scored as 0 (no trouble),1 (a little trouble), or 2 (a lot of trouble).

After the punishment questions, therewas a short break; tben the experimenter ad-ministered the remaining three sceneirios insuccession. All sessions were audiotaped forsubsequent analysis.

Results

Preliminary analyses revealed no sig-nificant effects of sex, so sex was droppedfrom subsequent analyses.

Confirmation QuestionsFor eacb scenario, participants were

asked four preliminary comprehensionquestions, two pertaining to the causal rela-tions between acts and outcomes and twopertaining to the character's intention. In97% of the cases (743 cases out of 768), par-ticipants answered the causal relation com-prehension questions correctly. Similarly,the intention questions were nearly always(94%) answered correctly. (In the large ma-jority [83%] of the cases where childrenerred, they erred by stating that the nastycharacter was nice.)

After the preliminary comprehensionquestions and prior to the three types of testquestion, participants were asked three cri-terial confirmation questions designed to en-sure that they understood and rememberedthe relations between acts and outcomes andthe intention of the story character. In 97%(374) of the 384 cases (3 questions x 4 sce-narios X 96 participants), participants an-swered all three of the questions correctly.There were 10 cases, involving eight differ-ent children, where participants failed to doso. These included three 3-year-olds in thenormal causality condition (two girls andone boy), four 3-year-olds in the noncanoni-cal condition (two girls and two boys), andone 4-year-old girl in the normal condition.

Behavioral prediction scores were con-verted to proportion correct based only onthe items for which the participants an-swered all three criterial confirmation ques-tions correctly. For the remaining two typesof questions, the eight participants who failedto answer all three confirmation questionscorrectly for one or more of the four scenar-ios were eliminated from the analyses.These participants were eliminated becausedetermination of tbe basis of tbeir judgments


on these questions required consideration oftheir pattern of responding across all fouritems.

Behavioral PredictionPreliminary examination of the data re-

vealed that adults performed almost per-fectly on the behavioral prediction questions(M = 0.99, SD = .05). Because of this ceil-ing effect, data from adults were omittedfrom an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on theproportion of behavioral prediction ques-tions answered correctly. A 3 (age) x 2 (cau-sality) ANOVA on arcsin transformed scoresrevealed a main effect of age, F(2, 66) =4.65, p < .05, and condition, F(l, 66) = 7.78,p < .01, but no significant age x conditioninteraction. Performance was better in thenormal condition (M = .91, SD = .15, re-ported in raw scores) than in the noncanoni-cal condition (M = .76, SD = .29). Tukey'shonestly significant difference (HSD) testsrevealed that 5-year-olds (M = .94, SD =.15) performed better than 3-year-oIds (M =.75, SD = .29; p < .05), but that neither ofthese groups differed from 4-year-olds (M =.82, SD = .24). (Random responding wouldproduce a score of .50.)

Comparison of individual participants'performance to chance corroborated the re-sults of the ANOVA. Each participant wasclassified as passing the behavioral predic-tion questions according to a criterion ofthree or four correct responses. The num-bers of participants reaching this criterionare listed in Table 2. The probability of an-swering three or four questions correctly (as-suming that four questions were considered)by chance was .31. A second-order applica-tion of the binomial theorem was used todetermine whether more children in each

TABLE 2

NUMBERS OF PARTICIPANTS CLASSIFIED AS PASSINGTHE BEHAVIORAL PHEDICTION QUESTIONS

ACCORDING TO A CRITERION OF THREEOR FOUR CORRECT RESPONSES

CAUSALITY

AGE Normal Noncanonical

3 years 9* 54 years 11* 8*5 years 12* 10*Adult 12* 12*

NOTE.—Asterisk indicates that the number of partici-pants exceeds the number expected by chance based ona second-order application of the binomial theorem (p <.05).

cell passed the questions than would be ex-pected by chance based on an alpha of .05.It was determined that the probability ofseven or more children answering three orfour out of four questions correctly bychance is .04. Thus, this analysis yielded acriterion of seven children out of 12. Morechildren were classified as passing thanwould be expected by chance for all cellsexcept 3-year-olds who received the nonca-nonical condition (p < .05).

Act Acceptability—QualitativeRules were fitted to each participant's

pattern of responses across the four qualita-tive act acceptability questions. In the largemajority of cases (94%), responses could befitted to one of the six rules listed in Table3. Table 3 also lists the percentage of partici-pants at each age and in each conditionwhose responses corresponded perfectly toeach rule. As is clear from this table, the out-come rule fit the majority of participants' re-sponses at all ages in both conditions. Incontrast, neither the act rule nor the inten-tion rule was able to account for participants'responses (there was only one case whereresponses corresponded to the intentionrule). Across both causal conditions, nearlyall 3-year-olds used the outcome rule. In-spection of Table 3 indicates that the per-centage of 3-year-olds using the outcomerule was comparable to the percentages of5-year-olds and adults who did so. However,because all of the 3-year-olds in the normalcausal condition used the outcome rule, datafrom this age group could not be includedin analyses on tbe use of this rule. For theremaining three age groups, the effects ofage and condition on the use of the outcomerule were examined using a categorical dataanalysis based on a linear models method(see Grizzle, Starmer, & Koch, 1969). Theonly significant effect to emerge from thisanalysis was a main effect of age, x^(2, N =71) = 7.27, p < .05. Separate chi-squaredtests were conducted to compare the num-bers of participants in each age group (col-lapsing across causal condition) who did ordid not use the outcome rule. These testsrevealed that 4-year-oIds were less likelythan 5-year-olds to use the outcome rule,X^(l, N = 47) = 5.63, p < .05, but that nei-ther 4-year-olds nor 5-year-olds differedfrom adults, x^(l, N = 47) = 1.04, N.S., andX^ih N = 48) = 2.02, N.S., respectively.

Act Acceptability—QuantitativePreliminary examination of act accept-

ability ratings confirmed that participantsused the full range of the 5-point scale (rang-


TABLE 3

PERCENTAGE OF PARTICIPANTS USING EACH AGT ACCEPTABILITY RULE BY AGE ANDCAUSALITY CONDITION

AGE

3 Years 4 Years 5 Years Adult

RULE N N C N N C N N C N N C

Intention 0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0Act 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Outcome 100 75 50 64 92 83 75 67Conjunction 0 0 8 9 8 8 17 17Disjunction 0 13 25 0 0 0 0 17Positive bias 0 13 8 0 0 0 0 0Other 0 0 8 27 0 0 8 0

NOTE.—N = normal, NC = noncanonical. Due to rounding to integers, percentages maynot sum to 100. Rules were as follows: Intention: If intention is positive, then act is okay; ifintention is negative then act is not okay. Act: If act is canonically positive, then act is okay; ifact is canonically negative, then act is not okay. Outcome: If outcome is positive, then act isokay; if outcome is negative, then act is not okay. Conjunction: If outcome is positive andintention is positive then act is okay; else act is not okay. Disjunction: If outcome is positiveor intention is positive then act is okay; else act is not okay. Positive bias: Act is always okay.

ing from 1 = really, really bad to 5 = really,really good). Thus, a four-way mixed AN-OVA (age X causality x act x intention)was conducted on these ratings. In this anal-ysis, the combination of a particular act (e.g.,petting) and a particular causal system (e.g.,noncanonical) always corresponded to a par-ticular outcome (e.g., crying). As a result, thesignificant act x causality interaction, F(I,80) = 437.75, p < .0001, reflected the influ-ence of outcome: Acts were rated as moreacceptable when they were committed in acausal condition where they produced smil-ing rather than crying (see Fig. 1). For exam-ple, hitting was rated as more acceptable inthe noncanonical condition than in the nor-mal condition. The ANOVA also revealed amain effect of intention, F(l, 80) = 12.89, p< .0005, that was qualified by a significantage X intention interaction, F(3, 80) = 3.6S,p < .05. Simple effects indicated that theeffect of intention was only significant for5-year-olds, F(l, 22) = 10.45, p < .005, andfor adults, F(l,22) = 14.61, p < .001. Meansand standard errors for the age x intentioninteraction are presented in Table 4. Therewere no other significant main effects or in-teractions.

Punishment Questions—QualitativeAs with act acceptability questions,

rules were fitted to each participant's patternof responses across the four qualitative pun-ishment questions. Responses could be fit-ted to one of the rules listed in Table 5 in92% ofthe cases. Table 5 also lists the per-

centage of participants at each age and ineach condition whose responses corre-sponded to each rule. The majority (75%) ofadults, but very few 3-year-olds, appeared touse the conjunction rule. The percentage of4- and 5-year-olds who used this rule wasintermediate. However, for the 5-year-olds,it was the dominant rule in the noncanonicalcondition, where it accounted for the re-sponses of 42% of the children. Across bothcausal conditions, only one 3-year-old usedthe conjunction rule. Because none of the3-year-olds in the noncanonical causal con-dition used the conjunction rule, data fromthe 3-year-olds could not be included in cat-egorical analyses on the use of this rule. Forthe remaining three age groups, the effectsof age and condition on the use of the con-junction rule were examined using a cate-gorical data analysis based on a linear mod-els method. This analysis revealed a strongmain effect of age, x^(2, N = 71) = 20.89, p< .0001. Separate chi-squared tests revealedthat, across causal conditions, both 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds were lass likely thanadults to use the conjunction rule, x^(l> ^ =47) = 13.33, p < .001, and x^(l, N = 48) =8.39, p < .005, respectively.

Punishment Questions—QuantitativeAs with the act acceptability ratings,

participants used the full range of the 3-point scale for assigning punishment (0 =none, 1 = a little, and 2 = a lot). A four-waymixed ANOVA (age x causality x act x in-tention) on punishment ratings revealed a


5-1

'4 .5-

Nice/Pets Mean/Pets Nice/Hits Mean/HitsScenario (Intention/Act)

FIG. 1.—Mean act acceptability ratings—quantitative (and SEs) as a function of causality condition,act, and intention.

significant act x causality interaction, F(l,80) = 85.85, p < .0001, which refiected thefact that punishment ratings were higherwhen the outcome was negative (see Fig. 2).There was also a significant main effect ofintention, F(l, 80) = 74.97, p < .0001, andan age x intention interaction, F(3, 80) =4.28, p < .01. However, all of these effectswere qualified by a three-way act X causal-ity X intention interaction, F(l, 80) = 30.75,p < .0001, and by a four-way age x act xcausality x intention interaction, F(l, 80) =6.95, p < .0005. The conjunction rule pre-dicts the three-way interaction (i.e., thereshould only be an effect of intention whenthe combination of act and causality leads toa negative outcome). The four-way interac-tion (for which cell sizes ranged from 8 to12) appears to refiect an age-related increasein the use of the conjunction rule. Visual in-spection of Figure 2 shows that the punish-ment ratings were highest when (a) the

TABLE 4

MEAN RATINGS OF ACCEPTABILITY (and StandardDeviations) BY AGE AND INTENTION

INTENTION

AGE Positive Negative

3 years 3.21 (.59) 2.85 (.96)4 years 2.70 (.99) 2.85 (.85)5 years 3.40 (.81)* 2.46 (.83)Adult 3.44 (.61)* 2.69 (.60)

NOTE.—Asterisk indicates that the mean for the posi-tive intention is higher than the corresponding mean forthe negative intention (p < .05). Ratings were on a 5-point scale.

outcome was negative (petting in the nonca-nonical causal condition and hitting in thenormal causal condition) and (b) the inten-tion was negative. To decompose the four-way interaction, we conducted separatecomparisons examining the effect of inten-tion for each type of outcome (positive andnegative) at each age and in each causal con-dition (for a total of 16 comparisons). Com-parisons were made using the Bonferroni tstatistic to guard against Type I error. Thesecomparisons revealed that there was a sig-nificant main effect of intention only foradults when the outcome was negative, *(22)= 266.2, p < .01, for hitting in the normalcausal condition, and t(22) = 137.5, p < .01,for petting in the noncanonical causal con-dition.

Discussion

Preschool children and adults were re-quired to use information about intentionsunder normal or noncanonical caused sys-tems in order to predict an agent's behavior.In addition, they were asked to integrate in-tentions, acts, and outcomes to judge the ac-ceptability of an act emd to assign punisb-ment to the agent. Behavioral predictionimproved with age and was more difficultwhen children were required to reasonabout a noncanonical causal system. Most 3-year-olds and many 4-year-olds performed atchance in the noncanonical condition. At allages, most participants made categoricaljudgments of act acceptability based solelyon outcome rather than on the canonical ac-ceptability of the acts or on intentions.Quantitative ratings of acceptability re-fiected an age-related increase in sensitivity

TABLE 5

PERCENTAGE OF PARTICIPANTS USING EACH PUNISHMENT RULE BY AGE ANDCAUSALITY CONDITION

AGE

3 Years 4 Years 5 Years Adult

RULE N NC N NC N NC N NC

Intention 22 13 17 8 17 8 25 17Act 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Outcome 33 38 17 27 25 33 0 0Conjunction 11 0 25 18 25 42 75 75Disjunction 0 0 8 8 8 0 0 8Positive bias 33 25 25 8 17 0 0 0Negative bias 0 0 0 8 0 0 0 0Other 0 25 8 8 8 17 0 0

NOTE.—N = normal,NC = noncanonical. Due to rounding to integers, percentages may notsum to 100. Rules were as follows: Intention: If intention is negative, then assign punishment; ifintention is positive, then do not assign punishment. Act; If act is canonicaljiy negative, thenassign punishment; if act is canonically positive, then do not assign punishment Outcome: Ifoutcome is negative, then assign punishment; if outcome is positive, then do not assign punish-ment. Conjunction: If outcome is negative and intention is negative, then assign punishment;else do not assign punishment Disjunction: If outcome is negative or intention is negative, thenassign punishment; else do not assign punishment Positive Bias: Always assign punishmentNegative Bias: Never assign punishment

Nicaff>els Mean/PM* NIcalHHs Mean/HHs

Scenario (liil«ntloiVAcl)-3-YEAR-OU)S

NIcafPets Mean/Pets Nica/Hlts Mean/Hits

Scenario (lntamion/Act)-5-YEAR-0LDS

Normal

Noncanonical

Nice/Pets MeenA>eto Nice/Hits HeenMHi

Scarario (intemion/AciH-YEAR-OLOS

NiceA>ats MeanA>ata NiceMits MeanmitaScenario (Intenlk)n/Act)-ADULTS

FIG. 2.—Mean punishment ratings—quantitative (and SEs) as a function of age, causality condi-tion, act, and intention.


to intention information: Ratings were sys-tematically infiuenced by intention only forthe 5-year-olds and adults. Age differenceswere also found for both types of punish-ment question. Older participants weremore likely to use a conjunction rule (if out-come is negative and intention is negativethen punish) to assign punishment, whereas3-year-olds and some 4-year-olds tended toemploy simple intention or outcome rules.

The results of this study lend support tothe suggestions that young preschoolers areable to make moral judgments based on un-derlying moral constructs such as harm, andthat these constructs are used to generategeneralizable moral judgments (Smetana &Braeges, 1990; Turiel et al., 1987). By 3 yearsof age, concepts of harm would seem to bedifferentiated from characterizations of par-ticular acts such that they can be employedin the context of entirely novel causal se-quences. Three-year-olds' judgments of actacceptability tended to be based on out-come, and no participant in the study madejudgments that were based solely on the ca-nonical acceptability of the act performed.Within a system of noncanonical causality,most preschoolers can conceive of accept-able hitting and unacceptable petting. Chil-dren are not limited to responding on thebasis of learned associations between spe-cific acts and adult sanctions or punishment(e.g., hitting is bad). How children come tofocus on harm in making moral judgments issubject to a variety of theoretical interpreta-tions, including cognitive development^and social learning accounts. Nonetheless,the findings of this study make clear thatsubstantive concepts of harm and welfare,however acquired, are guiding moral judg-ments by tbe fourth year of life.

The outcome rule, used at all ages inqualitative judgments of act acceptability,requires participants to consider only a sin-gle pair of conditional statements (if cryingthen punish; if smile then do not punish)and therefore should be within the ken of3-year-olds (Zeleizo & Reznick, 1991). Incontrast to the qualitative judgments, how-ever, the quantitative act acceptability judg-ments were sensitive to an age-related in-crease in the use of intention information,consistent with numerous previous studies(e.g., Buchanon & Thompson, 1973; Cos-tanzo et al., 1973; Gutkin, 1972; Hebble,1971; Helwig et al., 1995; Leon, 1980;Shultz et al., 1986; Surber, 1977; Wellmanet al., 1979). Participants appear to use a sim-ple outcome rule to make categorical judg-

ments about act acceptability, but for 5-year-olds and adults, ratings of degree ofacceptability were sensitive to additional in-formation (i.e., intentions).

In contrast to the acceptability judg-ments, the qualitative punishment judg-ments showed an age-related trend towardconvergence on the conjunction rule. Ac-cording to this rule, punishment is assignedonly if the outcome was negative (crying)and the intention was negative (mean). Thisrule requires the simultaneous use of twodimensions, which has previously beenfound to emerge at about 5 years of age (e.g.,Frye et al., 1995, Exp. 3; Roberts & Fischer,1979), so it is perhaps not surprising to findthat the conjunction rule was used by veryfew 3-year-olds (11% in the normal condi-tion and none in the noncanonical condi-tion). Collapsing across causality conditions,6% of 3-year-olds used the conjunction rule,whereas 22% of 4-year-olds, 33.3% of 5-year-olds, and 75% of adults were able to do so.

A simple outcome rule was used to as-sign punishment by a substantial percentageof children at all three ages (but none of theadults). Additionally, a minority of partici-pants at all ages (ranging from 13% to 21%,collapsing across condition) used an inten-tion rule. Both the outcome rule and the in-tention rule require only the use of a singlepair of conditional statements. Because amajority of participants at all ages used anoutcome rule in qualitative judgments of actacceptability, it may be the case that manyyounger children are generalizing a singlerule (namely, the outcome rule) to make anumber of different types of moral judgment(botb acceptability and punishment). Thus,the younger children may have been morelikely than older children and adults to failto distinguish between different types ofmoral judgment. A similar pattern, wheremoral judgments become more sensitivewith age to different types of contextual ap-plications, has been found for older cbildrenand adolescents in the areas of psychologicalharm and civil liberties (Helwig, 1995a,1995b, in press; Helwig et al., 1995). Fur-ther, overgeneralization of relatively simplerules by younger children has been notedoutside of the domain of moral reasoning(e.g., Zelazo & Shultz, 1989) and may be awidespread characteristic of cognitive de-velopmental change (Shultz, 1991).

The age-related increase in success onthe behavioral prediction questions was alsoconsistent with predictions made from the


Cognitive Complexity and Control Theory(Zelazo & Frye, in press). Analysis of indi-vidual patterns of responses across items re-vealed that most 3-year-olds and many 4-year-olds performed at chance in thenoncanonical condition, which requiredchildren first to determine the system of cau-sality and then to determine the agent's in-tention in order to predict the agent's act.Unlike the normal causality condition, in thenoncanonical condition, the relation be-tween act and outcome could not be takenfor granted. In the present study, 5-year-oldsand adults were well able to switch fromtheir own (normal) causality and make pre-dictions in the noncanonical causality condi-tion. This finding is consistent with previousstudies that have found that, adthough 3-year-olds can use a single pair of rules, it isnot until about 5 years of age that childrencan use a higher-order rule to select be-tween two incompatible pairs of rules (seeZelazo & Frye, in press).

The logic of the current design resem-bles in a general way that used by Das Guptaand Bryant (1989) to explore preschoolers'ability to make causal inferences. An earlierstudy (Gelman, Bullock, & Meek, 1980) hadfound that 3-year-olds were able to choosethe instrument (e.g., knife) that effected thetransformation from an initial state (e.g.,apple) to an end state (e.g., cut apple). How-ever, this study failed to provide convincingevidence that children could infer which in-strument caused the transformation becausethe problem could be solved simply know-ing the function of the instrument and con-sidering the end state (e.g., the cut apple).In order to assess whether children couldtrul)^ make inferences. Das Gupta and Bry-ant (1989, Exp. 2) adapted a procedure usedby Gelman et al. (1980) so that children wererequired to consider both the initial stateand the end state in order to infer the instru-ment. Children were presented with causalsequences that began with a noncanonicalstate (e.g., broken cup) and ended vdth a ca-nonical one (e.g., mended cup). Childrenthen had to choose an instrument from anarrajr' that included a distracter instrumentthat could have produced the initial nonca-nonical state (e.g., a hammer). Das Guptaand Bryant (1989) found that 3-year-olds typ-ically failed to select the appropriate instru-ment in this condition, instead choosing thedistracter instrument. In contrast, 4-year-olds performed well. The authors concludedthat genuine causal inference develops dur-ing the preschool period. In the current

study, the use of a noncanonical conditionallowed us to determine whether childrenwere able to make a genuine behavioral pre-diction. Behavioral prediction in the nonca-nonical condition required children first toconsider the appropriate act-outcome rela-tion (while ignoring the usual causal system)and then to consider the agent's intention inorder to predict the agent's act. Many 3-year-olds appesir to base their predictions on in-tention information alone.

Although children at all ages use inten-tion information when making behavioralpredictions, the majority of 3-year-olds didnot use intention information when re-sponding to the act acceptability questionsand the punishment questions. Rather, theuse of intention information to judge act ac-ceptability increased with age and the useof intention information in combination withoutcome information increased with age injudgments of punishment. An earlier study(Nelson, 1980) using a similar methodology(e.g., stories were presented both verballyand pictorially) found that 3-year-olds reliedon intention (motive) information to judgehow good or bad an actor was. These differ-ences may be due to the different dimen-sions of moral judgment assessed. Nelson(1980) asked children to evaluate agents,rather than to make judgments about punish-ment or the acceptability of acts. Use of in-tentions in agent evaluations, as in behav-ioral prediction, may be developmentallyprior to use of intentions in other judgments.

Our results indicate that the use of in-tentions in moral judgment depends in parton the particular type of judgment being as-sessed (act acceptability or punishment) andalso on the assessment methodology (quali-tative or quantitative). When making moraljudgments, children do not invariably re-spond with either an outcome or an inten-tion orientation. In this regard, the findingsfrom this study are inconsistent with the no-tion of a global stage of heteronomy (Piaget,1932) in which younger children display arigid orientation to moral rules and basetheir judgments of moral responsibility onexternal features such as outcomes, whereasolder children and adults focus on subjectivefeatures such as intentions. Although themajority of 3-year-olds were outcome ori-ented, they displayed a flexible orientationto moral acts as shown by their responsesin the noncanonical conditions, where theywere able to conceive of hitting as good andpetting as bad. In addition, even adultsrarely based judgments of act acceptability


or punishment on intention alone. Differentmoral judgments would seem to elicit theuse of different types of information. Thisfinding has important implications for futureresearch, in that it suggests that greater at-tention may need to be paid to the type ofdimension assessed when interpreting age-related norms and progressions in moraljudgment research. Further, for differentjudgments, different rules will be requiredto integrate information about intentions,acts, and outcomes, and the use of theserules appears to be constrained in part bytheir complexity, as predicted by the Cogni-tive Complexity and Control Theory. Thus,in addition to addressing some fundamentalquestions about the basis of children' moraljudgments, the study illustrates the utilityof considering moral development in thecontext of more general cognitive develop-mental changes.

AppendixSample ScenariosNormal Causality, Positive Intention, Hitting

Here's Sally [drawing 1]. Sally's parentswent on a trip to Brazil, far far away. You knowwhat they found there? They found a special kindof animal called a dax [drawing 2] and theybrought it back to Sally. Now, a dax is pretty nor-mal, it has skin just like you and me. When youpet a dax, it feels good and it smiles [drawing 3].What does a dax do when you pet it? It doesn'tlike to be hit, though [drawing 4]. That really, re-ally hurts a dax, when you hit it. When you hit it,it hurts and it cries. What does a dax do whenyou hit it? Sally is nice. She doesn't want to hurtanyone. She's nice, isn't she? Yes, she's nice. So,when her parents gave her the dax she wanted tomake it feel good [drawing 5]. Is Sally mean ornice? Does she want to hurt anyone? Now, whatdoes a dax do when you pet it? And what does itdo when you hit it? And is Sally mean or nice?

Behavioral prediction question: Now, Sallyknows that a dax is normal. She knows that it crieswhen you hit it and that it smiles when you petit. What is Sally going to do? That's right. Sally isnice, she wanted to make the dax feel good andshe knew it didn't like to be hit so she tried to petit. But you know what? When she tried to pet it,the dax jumped up and so she ended up hittkig it[drawing 4—reprise] by mistake and the dax cried[drawing 6].

Act acceptability questions: Is it okay for herto hit the dax? How bad/good is it to hit the dax?Is it really, really good or a just little good or justokay?

Punishment questions: Should Sally get introuble? A little trouble or a lot of trouble?

Noncanonical causality. PositiveIntention, Hitting

Here's Sally [drawing 1]. Sally's parentswent on a trip to Brazil, far far away. You knowwhat they found there? They found a special kindof animal called a mugwump [drawing 2] and theybrought it back to Sally. Now, a mugwump ispretty weird, it has thick skin like rubber. Whenyou hit a mugwump, its belly jiggles and wigglesand it feels good and it smiles [drawing 3]. Whatdoes a mugwump do when you hit it? It doesn'tlike to be petted, though [drawing 4]. That really,really hurts a mugwump, when you pet it becauseof its rubbery skin. When you pet it, it hurts andit cries. What does a mugwump do when you petit? Sally is nice. She doesn't want to hurt anyone.She's nice, isn't she? Yes, she's nice. So, whenher parents gave her the mugwump she wantedto make it feel good [drawing 5]. Is Sally mean ornice? Does she want to hurt anyone? Now, whatdoes a mugwump do when you pet it? And whatdoes it do when you hit it? And is Sally mean ornice?

Behavioral prediction question: Now, Sallyknows that a mugwump cries when you pet it andthat it smiles when you hit it. What is Sally goingto do? That's right Sally is nice, she wanted tomake the mugwump feel good and she knew itliked to be hit so she hit it [drawing 3—reprise]and the mugwump smiled [drawing 6].

Act acceptability questions: Is it okay for herto hit the mugwump? How bad/good is it to hitthe mugwump? Is it really, really good or a justlittle good or just okay?

Punishment questions: Should Sally get introuble? A little trouble or ^ lot of trouble?

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