Intent-Based Moral Judgment in Old Age

Abstract

Objectives: Recent 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. Method: Participants 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. Results: The two age groups did not differ in the extent they relied on intentions in moral judgment. Discussion: These 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.