Concepts of negligence and intention in the assignment of moral responsibility.

Abstract
The roles of negligence and intention in the assignment of moral responsibility were examined. Subjects read stories in which an actor caused harm or benefit to another person intentionally, negligently, or through pure accident. As expected, the results indicated that, whereas intention was critical in judging benefit, negligence was critical in judging harm. Judgments of how the outcome was caused and how the actor should be treated corresponded closely to decisions on moral responsibility. Implications of these findings for the literatures on moral judgment and attributional processes were discussed.

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