New Studies

Sorry I have been asleep at the wheel lately. Like many of you, I have been busy preparing to make the transition from a hectic summer to an even more hectic fall semester. In any event, I am running a number of studies during the next week and a half. The first two were run earlier today--so, I thought I would post the results to see what everyone thought. In the first study, I have tried to get at folk intuitions concerning Anscombe's famous water pumper case. And while the results are not surprising given what we have already learned about folk ascriptions of intentional action during the past few years, I hope to shed some additional light on the relationship between foresight, side effects, intentions, and intentional actions. The group of 53 participants were divided in two groups (26/27 respectively)--each participant recieving one of the following two scenarios:

Case 1 (C1):
There is a man who gets paid for pumping water into a cistern thereby replenishing the supply of drinking water in a nearby house. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of the house, the water that the man is pumping into the cistern today has been systematically contaminated with a lethal poison whose effects are unnoticeable until they can no longer be cured. Even though the man pumping the water had nothing to do with poisoning the water, he knows that the water has been poisoned. Nevertheless, the man pumps the water into the cistern knowing that it will poison and kill the inhabitants. But, he neither wants to kill them nor does he aim to do so, he simply wants to do his job and get paid. He views the death of the inhabitants as an unfortunate by-product of his pumping water into the cistern.

Questions:
1) Did the man intentionally poison the inhabitants? Y N
2) Did the man intend to poison the inhabitants? Y N
3) Did the man purposely poison the inhabitants? Y N
4) How much blame does the man deserve for the death of the inhabitants (On a scale from 0 to 6— 0 being no blame and 6 being a lot of blame):

Case 2 (C2):
There is a man who gets paid for pumping water into a cistern thereby replenishing the supply of drinking water in a nearby house. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of the house, the water that the man is pumping into the cistern today has been systematically contaminated with a lethal poison whose effects are unnoticeable until they can no longer be cured. Even though the man pumping the water had nothing to do with poisoning the water, he knows that the water has been poisoned. Nevertheless, the man pumps the water into the cistern knowing that it will poison and kill the inhabitants. But, he doesn’t care at all about the inhabitants, he simply wants to do his job and get paid.

Questions:
1) Did the man intentionally poison the inhabitants? Y N
2) Did the man want to poison the inhabitants? Y N
3) Did the man intend to poison the inhabitants? Y N
4) Did the man purposely poison the inhabitants? Y N
5) How much blame does the man deserve for the death of the inhabitants (On a scale from 0 to 6— 0 being no blame and 6 being a lot of blame):

The results were as follows:
C1:
1) 81% said he poisoned the inhabitants intentionally
2) 54% said he intended to poison them
3) 77% said he purposely poisoned them
4) The average blame rating was 4.97

C2:
1) 81% said he poisoned them intentionally
2) 22% said he wanted to poison them (despite the fact that the vignette did not mention whether he did)
3) 56% said he intended to poison them
4) 85% said he purposely poisoned them
5) The average blame rating was 4.44

Since I just ran these today, I have yet to think too much about the results (except to the extent that they are consistent with similar studies that Malle, Knobe, McCann, and myself have run in the past). Hopefully, I will be able to post something soon. For now, I want to present the results of the other study--one that does not involve any moral considerations.

This time, another group of 54 participants was once again divided in two (26/28 respectively)--each participant received one of the following vignettes:

Case 1 (C1):
Imagine that there is a man who needs to mow his lawn this weekend and the only time he will be able to do so is early on a Sunday morning. Of course, he knows that mowing his lawn early in the morning will definitely annoy his neighbors, but he does not want to annoy them—he just want to cut his grass. So, at 6:30 am on Sunday the man cuts his grass. And, as expected, the neighbors are annoyed.

1) Did the man intentionally annoy his neighbors? Y N
2) Did the man intend to annoy his neighbors? Y N
3) Did the man purposely annoy his neighbors? Y N

Case 2 (C2):
Imagine that there is a man who needs to mow his lawn this weekend and the only time he will be able to do so is early on a Sunday morning. Of course, he knows that mowing his lawn early in the morning will annoy his neighbors, but he does not care at all about his neighbors—he just wants to cut his grass. So, at 6:30 am on Sunday the man cuts his grass. And, as expected, the neighbors are annoyed.

1) Did the man intentionally annoy his neighbors? Y N
2) Did the man want to annoy his neighbors? Y N
3) Did the man intend to annoy his neighbors? Y N
4) Did the man purposely annoy his neighbors? Y N

The results were as follows:
C1:
1) 36% said he intentionally annoyed them
2) 25% said he intended to annoy them
3) 39% said he purposely annoyed them

C2:
1) 25% said he intentionally annoyed them
2) 0% said he wanted to annoy them
3) 8% said he intended to annoy them
4) 25% said he purposely annoyed them

Well, that's it for now. I will post something in a few days once I have completed a few more studies. I look forward to getting some feedback.