Foreknowledge, Caring, and the Side-Effect Effect in Young Children Sandra Pellizzoni University of Trieste Michael Siegal University of Trieste and University of Sheffield Luca Surian University of Trento, Rovereto Children and adults often judge that the side effects of the actions of an uncaring story agent have been intentional if the effects are harmful but not if these are beneficial, creating an asymmetrical “side-effect” effect. The authors report 3 experiments involving 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 188) designed to clarify the role of foreknowledge and caring in judgments of intentionality. Many children showed the side-effect effect even if agents were explicitly described as lacking foreknowledge of the outcome. Similarly, when agents were described as possessing foreknowledge but their caring state was unspecified, children more often judged that the negative, compared with the positive, effects of agents’ actions were brought about intentionally. Regardless of foreknowledge, children infrequently judged positive outcomes as intentional when agent caring was unspecified, and they gave few attributions of intentionality when agents were described as having a false belief about the outcome. These results testify to the robustness of the side-effect effect and highlight the extent to which children’s intentionality judgments are asymmetrical. The findings suggest developmental continuity in the link between reasoning about morality and intentionality. Keywords: moral development, side-effect effect, intentionality In the context of the recent burgeoning interest in moral psy- chology (Dwyer, 2006; Hauser, 2006), a major focus for research has concerned the side-effect effect (SEE). This effect occurs in adults asked to consider scenarios in which agents dismiss infor- mation about the harming or helping side effects of their actions. Harmful side effects of these actions are judged as having been produced intentionally, whereas the helpful side effects are not. The asymmetry is surprising because in both the negative and positive scenarios, agents are explicitly described as dismissive (“not caring”) about the side effects of their actions. In an intriguing series of studies, Knobe (2003a, 2003b, 2004) gave adults stories in which the issue of not caring was stated in relation to positive or negative side effects. For example, in one situation, a company vice-president was described as having told the board chairman, “We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, and it will also help/harm the environment.” The chairman of the board answered, “I don’t care at all about helping/harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program.” They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was helped/ harmed. The test question was, “Did the chairman help/harm the environment intentionally?” Judgments of whether or not the chairman brought about the side effect intentionally depended on whether the side effect was helping or harmful. Participants often— but not always—judged the helpful side effect to be unin- tentional. If the effect was harmful, it was often judged to be intentional. In this case, there had been a clear reference to dec- larations of uncaring that the environment could be harmed by the company’s action. Leslie, Knobe, and Cohen (2006) found a similar, asymmetrical SEE in 4- and 5-years-olds. In one condition in which the outcome was negative, children were told the following story: Here is a boy named Andy, and he’s over at his house. And here is a girl named Janine, and she’s over at her house. And look what Andy has with him— he has a . . . [frog]. Now Andy loves frogs, but Janine hates frogs. Now can you remember— does Andy love frogs? Does Janine love frogs? Andy wants to bring the frog over to Janine’s house, but she will get upset. Why will she get upset? Now listen very carefully. Andy does not care that Janine will get upset. He is going to bring the frog over anyway. Does Andy care that Janine will get upset? So Andy brings the frog over to Janine’s house, and she gets upset. Now I have a question for you: Did Andy make Janine upset on purpose? In another condition, the story structure was the same except that the second character liked the frog, and there was a happy outcome. The children answered that the side effect was brought Sandra Pellizzoni, Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy; Michael Siegal, Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy, and Department of Psychology, University of Shef- field, Sheffield, United Kingdom; and Luca Surian, Department of Cog- nitive Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy. This article was prepared with the support of an EU Marie Curie Chair and grants from the Fondazione Benefica Kathleen Foreman-Casali and the Italian Ministry of Education FIRB and PRIN research programs. It ben- efited from discussions we had at the Arts and Humanities Research Council Culture and the Mind Workshop in Sheffield, UK, October 2007. Some of the results were presented at the Sixth International Conference on Thinking, San Servolo Island, Venice, Italy, August 2008. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael Siegal, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TP, UK. E-mail: m.siegal@sheffield.ac.uk Developmental Psychology © 2009 American Psychological Association 2009, Vol. 45, No. 1, 289 –295 0012-1649/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0014165 289