Posted: December 20th, 2021

Children’s understanding the links between morality and intentional judgement by norm status
Introduction
The foreseen side effect of children’s judgment of intentional acts are influenced by their moral judgments, such that they are more likely to make intentional attributions to acts that are morally wrong than morally right (Leslie, Knobe & Cohen, 2006). The example scenario of morally bad outcomes attribute intentional acts, it involves a company that wanted to start a new program which would have expected side-effects. The company continued with the program since they intended to make a profit while disregarding the harmful consequences to the environment (Knobe, 2013). Most adult participants recognise the agent’s intentional action towards harming the environment condition (negative consequences) and the agent’s unintentional towards helping the environment condition (positive consequences). Intentional judgement is based on morally bad outcomes whereas unintentional is based on morally good outcomes which refers as side-effect effect (S-EE).
Furthermore, similar S-EE can be seen in children’s intentional judgement towards negative outcomes. Children’s theory of mind (TOM) is related to moral development when they judge intention. As Children’s theory of mind development is capable of understanding another person’s mental states such as beliefs, desire and intentions whereas moral development is ability to distinguish between morally right and wrong. Therefore, children with higher level of theory of mind are able to consider intention when they judge morally good or bad actions (Loureiro & Souza, 2013). Moreover, children from ages 3 year old have different intentional judgements compared to older children (> 5 year old) and adults (Leslie et al., 2006; Rakoczy, Behne, Clüver, Dallmann, Weidner & Waldmann, 2008). The study shows that 3-years old children have intentional judgement bias towards negative outcomes. In contrast, the “side-effect” judgement is noticeable in the four and five years old preschool children. The study says that when children create a harmful outcome that affects others, it is intentional and morally wrong.
In the experiment, 3 to 5-years-old children were asked to judge intentional vs unintentional acts based on SEE, by predicting a person’s (receiver) desires and feelings relating to happiness or sadness. Children are asked to judge the giver’s intention by the actor’s affect. In the happy condition, the receiver gets the item they like. In the sad condition, the receiver doesn’t get the item they like or get the item they hate. The purpose was to look at whether caring vs not caring was attributed to another person’s happiness or sadness (SEE). 4 and 5-year-old children showed influences of “side-effect”, they understood the actor’s intentions from the judgement of moral outcomes; such as answering ‘no’, and the action is not on purpose towards the beneficial outcomes. However, 3-year-old show ‘yes-intentional’ bias towards the positive outcomes as unable to distinguish the actor’s intention because they’re not capable of being influenced by SEE. Thus, their ratings of intentionality or unintentionality (TOM) reasoning, is influenced by morally good or bad outcomes which develop by aged as they learn intention is only applicable towards harmful outcomes (Leslie et al., 2006).
Moreover (Uttic & Lomrozo, 2010) study shows, with the rational-scientist model, people’s intentional judgement depends on norm status rather than side-effect effect. The SEE is intentional judgement as violation of the moral norm compared to norm conforming. Therefore, from rational-scientists view, intentionality is reduced when conforming to norms even in negative outcomes SEE whereas intentionality increases when violating the norm with a positive outcomes (Uttic & Lomrozo, 2010). In the study, the participant’s rating violating or conformance to norms regardless of positive or negative outcomes by using moral norms scenarios of “superhero (help), supervillain (harm)” context. Such as a supervillain who decelerates global warming (violating supervillain-norms) which he supposedly be causing harm. However, if supervillain is helping, then the participants consider as intentional. When superhero harm the environment (violating superhero-norm) which is intentional. Therefore, greater intentional judgement is when violating norm rather than outcomes itself (Uttic & Lomrozo, 2010).
Furthermore, Rakoczy et al (2008) indicates that children as young as 3-year old demonstrate understanding of normative structures and conventional function, they could apply their knowledge of social environments to the simple (rolling a marble) game. 3 years old children showed the explicit responses to the puppet such as they were protested or critiqued when puppet was not following the game rule correctly. The study suggests that even 3-year-old children have grasp between conventional norm such as able to understand specific social norm (Rakoczy et al., 2008).
In the (Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010; Papadopoulos & Hayes, 2017) studies, adults participants’ intentional judgement was from the norm status rather than S-EE, (Rakoczy et al, 2008) shows 3-years-old children able to grasp the concept of conventional or social norm, perhaps these could be the underlying factors for (Leslie et al, 2006) found. She found 3-years-old children have ‘yes-intentional’ bias towards even positive outcomes, and 5-years old have decrease ‘yes-intentional’ for the positive outcomes as they are able to demonstrate S-EE. For the alternative finding may be if the children’s intentional judgement, whether understanding social norms could accounted for showing side-effect effect. Therefore, the aims of the present study is to reproduce the “side-effect” to children through the manipulation of the social norms by simplifying past experimental methods to suit younger children. The study will determine if the “side-effect” effect can be seen in younger than 5 years old children. The hypothesis is if a violation of social norms drives the side-effect effect in children, they will show this effect to the design of specific to the social norm.
Method
Participants
The subjects will be 30 participants per group (3 and 5-years-old) children, both with an equal share of boys and girls N=60 (Leslie et al., 2006). The children will be recruited from various urban day-cares with mixed socioeconomic backgrounds (native English speakers).
Design
The experiment will be a mixed model of between within-subject design where the between subject factors is age (3 & 5-years) and within subject factor is social norms (norm violating vs. norm conforming).
Material
Puppet, table, marble, TV.
Procedure
In stage 1, participants are exposed to a task that teaches them the rules of a game which reflects social norm of the game. They will complete a warm-up phase to familiarise them with the rule of the “rolling marble” game and getting comfortable with “Bob” the puppet (tool of the game). The rule of the game would involve manually rolling a marble on the table into a hole, and the marble cannot be lifted off the table. The experimenter will say “This round ball is called a marble. I will show you how to play the rolling marble game. We want to roll the marble into the hole in the table. We can only use our hands, and the marble has to stay on the table, it shall not be lifted off the table.” The experimenter will mark Action 1 (A1) as “rolling” which is a “correct” response and Action 2 (A2) as “lifting marble off the table and placing it into the hole” as the “incorrect” response (Rakoczy et al., 2008). The purpose of this task is to test whether the participants understand social norms.
In the next phase of the experiment, the experimenter will perform A1 and A2. Action Phase: Child’s turn to get the marble into the hole. Test Phase: Puppet announces, “I’m going to roll the marble!”, and perform action (A2)- incorrect response, lifts marble off the table.
Children’s interventions were coded and scored as ‘explicit’ when the child told the puppet what to do, what not to do, or what was missing, e.g. “No! You have to keep it on the table!” or “Not this way!” and as ‘implicit’ when the child just pointed to the puppet. Rolling a marble 5-times, correct norm-enforcing behaviour will be coded. A similar process will do with the control phase, but A1 and A2 were neutral.
In the next experimenter phase, an animated story will be displayed on-screen alongside an experimenter who will ask controlled questions to the child to gain assurance that the children understood the design. The participants will then be asked whether the superhero of the animated story would want the outcome to happen; wherein the experimenters would measure the children’s sense of the superhero’s intentional acts. Refer to appendix 1 for the animated story.
For the warm-up phase, the study will be handled by two experimenters, the one who will show the children how to play the game and the other will control the puppet. Following the animated story, the participants views of the superhero’s intentional acts will be accessed by asking them norm-violating and norm-conforming questions. Norm-violating question would be “did the superhero wanted to hurt the bee on purpose”, norm conforming question is “did the superhero wanted to help people on purpose”, and yes and no questions were recorded.
Discussion
Warm up phase

Figure 1 – Number of norms enforcing behaviour per trial in 3 and 5-years-old children
The results suggest (Figure 1) illustrates the number of correct responses of norms- enforcing behaviour. We expected that both age group (3 and 5-years-old children) will show a similar number of norms-enforcing behaviour indicated that they understand social-norm. We will exclude the children who do not show norm-enforcing behaviour.

Figure 2 – intentionality rating of norm conforming and violating in 3 and five years old children
The expected results (figure 2), the expectation of “side-effect” effect of intentionality judgement as compared to norm status. Superhero harms the environment (norms-violating) condition would have higher intentional rating than helps (norms-conforming). However, 5-years-old will reduce intentional-ratings in norms-conforming condition than 3-years-old children.
Conclusion
We expected all children will show similar results of norm-enforcing behaviour (figure 1) as they understand conventional norm. In figure-2, 3-years-old will exhibit higher intentional-ratings with negative outcomes even in norm-conforming condition because they will have limitation on showing S-EE as compared to 5-years-old. Therefore, 5-years-old children will show reduce intentional judgement during norm-conforming condition because they have more understanding of the norms status and show S-EE. We expected 3 and 5 years will show different result in moral-norm judgement because it may be 3-years-old children’ theory of mind development link to moral reasoning is still limited.

References
Knobe, J. (2003). Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language. Analysis, 63, 190-193.
Leslie, A. M., Knobe, J. & Cohen, A. (2006). Acting intentionally and the Side-effect Effect: Theory of Mind and Moral Judgement. Psychological Science, 17(5), 421-427. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40064559
Loureiro, C., & Souza, D. (2013). The Relationship between Theory of Mind and Moral Development in Preschool Children. Article, 23(54), 93-101. doi: 10.1590/1982-43272354201311
Papadopoulos, C. & Hayes, B. K. (2017). What matters when judging intentionality—moral content or normative status? Testing the rational scientist model of the side-effect.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1312-x
Rakoczy, H., Behne, T., Clüver, A., Dallmann, S., Weidner, S. & Waldmann, M.R. (2008) The Side-Effect Effect in Children Is Robust and Not Specific to the Moral Status of Action Effects. PLoS ONE, 10(7): e0132933. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132933
Uttich, K., & Lombrozo, T. (2010). Norms inform mental state ascriptions: A rational explanation for the side-effect effect. Cognition, 116, 87-100.

Appendix 1.
The animated story would go like this:
Vignette – Bumble-Bees are stinging people and making them sore (Enactment of a bumblebee stinging someone). But this superhero wants to help the world by taking out the bees’ stingers so that they no longer hurt. By taking out the stinger from the bee, the bee no longer stings people (Control question: What happens when you take out the stinger? Answer: People no longer get hurt). However, when you take out the bees’ stinger, the bee sometimes gets sick, and the honey will not taste good (Control question: What might happen when you take out the stinger? Answer: Bee might get sick, and honey will not taste good). As predicted, the bees get ill, and the honey does not taste very good. Did our superhero do it on purpose?

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