The effects of perceived intent and affective anger on moral judgements : a CNI model analysis

Existing moral judgement studies suggest that perceiving a moral agent as having bad intentions is associated with negative moral judgement of that agent. However, the extent to which intent-related negative moral judgement is associated with moral sensitivities has seen comparatively little research. The current study measured participant sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to norms (N), and general preference for agent-inaction (I) in response to a series of moral dilemmas. Participants (N = 130, mean age = 29.9) were assigned to 2 conditions: depicting moral agent's as having good vs bad intentions. Dilemma manipulations (2x2) consisted of: costs of action being greater-than vs lesser-than benefits of action, and normative prescription vs prohibition of taking action. Contrary to the second and third hypotheses, perceived-intent was found to have no significant effect on C or N parameters. As hypothesised, perceived-intent did effect preference for agent-inaction, such that a greater preference was associated with the bad-intent condition. Participant's responses to a short anger scale were used to compare intent-effects between high and low anger-sensitivity groups. Variation of intent-effects was observed between anger-sensitivity groups, such that, contrary to the hypothesis, no significant differences remained between intent conditions at higher anger levels.