Children's intention-based moral judgments of helping agents

tDuring preschool years, children’s disapprovals of harming actions increasingly rely onintention rather than outcome. Here we studied for the first time whether a similaroutcome-to-intent shift occurs in judgments of helping actions. Children aged four-to-eight (N = 404) were asked to evaluate the goodness and deserved reward of attemptedand accidental help (Experiment 1), and the badness and punishability of attempted andaccidental harm (Experiment 2). We found an outcome-to-intent shift both in goodness andbadness evaluations. In judging failed attempts, children’s intent-based attribution of good-ness develops prior to the intent-based attribution of badness. We discuss the implicationsof the present findings for recent theories on conceptual change and cognitive architectureunderlying the development of moral judgment.