Intention-Outcome Trade-Off in Moral Character Learning.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Moral Psychology
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Evaluating moral character necessitates differentiating action intentions from their consequences.
• The cognitive mechanisms underlying this intention-outcome discrimination are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel experimental paradigm that isolates the perception of intentions from outcomes.
• To investigate the interplay between intention and outcome processing during learning and moral evaluation.

Main Methods:

• A novel paradigm was employed to present intentions and outcomes separately to participants.
• Participants made predictions and received feedback on intentions and outcomes before moral judgments.
• Four independent experiments involving 120 participants were conducted.
• Computational modeling was used to analyze the learning dynamics.

Main Results:

• Intentions and outcomes exhibited mutual influence during the learning phase prior to moral evaluation.
• Computational models showed intentions biasing outcome predictions, and outcomes updating intention beliefs.
• Participants weighted intentions more heavily than outcomes in their moral evaluations, irrespective of presentation order or sampling bias.

Conclusions:

• The study provides novel insights into how individuals integrate intention and outcome information for moral character assessment.
• A clear dissociation and subsequent integration process for intention and outcome perception was demonstrated.
• Findings highlight the significant role of intention in shaping moral judgments, even when outcomes are known.