Intent-Based Moral Judgment in Old Age

Francesco Margoni, Isu Cho and Angela Gutchess

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2023, vol. 78, issue 7, 1136-1141

Abstract: ObjectivesRecent studies support the idea of an intent-to-outcome shift in moral judgments with age. We further assessed whether a reduced reliance on intentions is associated with aging in a preregistered study with 73 younger (20–41 years) and 79 older (70–84 years) adults, group-matched on education level.MethodParticipants were presented with a set of moral cases to evaluate, created by varying orthogonally the valence (neutral, negative) of the information regarding the agent’s intentions and the action’s outcomes.ResultsThe two age groups did not differ in the extent they relied on intentions in moral judgment.DiscussionThese results suggest that an intent-to-outcome shift might not be found in all aging populations, challenging prevailing theories suggesting that aging is necessarily associated with a reduced reliance on intentions.

Keywords: Aging; Intent-to-outcome shift; Mental states; Moral judgment; Replication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbac114 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:78:y:2023:i:7:p:1136-1141.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().