Unintentional Murder?

Source: aastock/Shutterstock

Prior to the mid-20th century, philosophers and psychologists took it for granted that ordinary folks have fairly good cognitive skills when it comes to solving simple problems involving probability, conditionals, causation, intentional action, or other people's minds.

But around the mid-to-late 20th century, skepticism about this view started to arise in academic circles. The source of the skepticism was research that apparently showed people often fail to accurately answer even the simplest questions about probability, conditionals, or other people's minds. Most people can actually solve the problems if asked to slow down and reflect on a problem before offering a solution. Researchers have taken this to suggest that slow but reliable cognitive processes stand second in line. Apparently, prioritizing fast but less reliable cognitive processes have proven evolutionarily beneficial.

Another line of research supposedly casting doubts on our theoretical problem-solving acumen is a barrage of studies demonstrating that our ability to make accurate judgments about ordinary matters involving causation, intentional action, or other people's minds, often is obstructed by concerns that are very human but also irrelevant to the task. Our moral judgments, for example, apparently impair our ability to accurately judge whether the foreseeable consequences of other people's actions are brought about intentionally.

In a study conducted by Yale philosopher Joshua Knobe, two groups of research participants were each assigned one of the following vignettes and asked to answer a question about the intent behind the chairman's actions:

(1A)

The vice-president of a company goes to the chairman of the board and says, "We are thinking of starting a new program. It will increase our profits, but it will harm the environment." The chairman of the board answers, "I don’t care at all about the environment. I just want us to increase our profits. Let’s start the new program." They start the new program and sure enough, the environment is harmed.

Did the chairman intentionally harm the environment?

(1B)

[...] and it will help the environment." [...] The chairman of the board answers, "I don’t care at all about the environment. I just want us to increase our profits. Let’s start the new program." They start the new program, and sure enough, the environment is helped.

Did the chairman intentionally help the environment?

(1A) and (1B) are symmetrical; the only difference is that the foreseeable side effect of the chairman’s decision is harmful in (1A) but beneficial in (1B). Yet most participants who were given (1A) judged that the chairman intentionally harmed the environment, whereas most participants who were given (1B) judged that the chairman didn’t intentionally benefit the environment. As the only apparent major difference between (1A) and (1B) lies in the moral status of the chairman’s decision, this suggests that people’s moral judgments are somehow affecting their seemingly non-moral judgments about intentional action.

This surprising finding is also referred to as the "side-effect effect" or the "Knobe effect." The effect has been replicated on numerous occasions and therefore cannot be explained by study limitations.

How do we explain this effect? Knobe suggests that we look to evidence in social psychology that suggests that people often make judgments that vindicate their pre-existing moral views. This kind of motivational bias, Knobe argues, can help explain why people make different judgments in cases like (1A) and (1B). Most people are likely to think that people who behave like the chairman in (1A) are morally despicable. According to Knobe, this pre-existing moral view motivates people to interpret the chairman as intentionally harming the environment, even though he doesn't intentionally harm it.

I disagree with Knobe, however, that the side-effect effect actually requires construing people's cognitive processes as "biased" or "distorted." Let's begin by asking what it means to do something intentionally. Presumably, it requires acting with intent (or strong desire).

But there are several things "intent" could mean. Legal theory distinguishes between specific intent and general intent with or without malice (where malice is specific intent or reckless disregard). Theft is a specific intent crime. For an act to count as theft, the actor must do it with the specific intent to permanently deprive the victim of his or her property. But for an act to be murder, it may suffice that the actor acted with malice and that the act resulted in the foreseeable death of the victim.

My hypothesis is that the Knobe effect occurs because most people haven’t assimilated the difference between specific intent and general intent plus malice. To test this, I ran these Knobe-style vignettes by two groups of volunteers:

(2A)

The vice-president of a company goes to the chairman of the board and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new program. It will increase our profits, but a couple of poor people will die’. The chairman of the board answers, ‘I don’t care at all about poor people. I just want us to increase our profits. Let’s start the new program’. They start the new program, and sure enough, a couple of poor people die.

Did the chairman intentionally kill the poor people?

(2B)

[...] and it will help a couple of poor people." [...] The chairman of the board answers, "I don’t care at all about poor people. I just want us to increase our profits. Let’s start the new program." They start the new program, and sure enough, it helps a couple of poor people.

Did the chairman intentionally help the poor people?

Environment Essential Reads

Physical and Mental Health Risks in an Intense Heat Climate

What Can We Do to Protect Our Brains From Heat?

As expected, most participants answer "yes" to (2A) (and "no" to 2B). But isn't that "a" correct answer? Granted, the chairman didn’t specifically intend to kill the poor people but he intentionally performed an act with malice (his "decision"), and that caused the (foreseeable) death of a couple of poor people, which means that he could be convicted of murder.

In the original vignette in (1A), Knobe’s envisaged chairman doesn’t care whether the environment is harmed, which means that he intentionally performs an act with malice that results in foreseeable harm to the environment. But if a positive answer to (2A) is "a" correct answer, then so is a positive answer to (1A).

The asymmetry between (1A) and (1B) is also easily explained. In (1B), the chairman evidently didn’t act with malice, as his decision effectively ends up helping the environment. So, a failure to distinguish specific intent and general intent plus malice could well explain Knobe’s findings without positing any biased cognitive processing.