Intent-Based Moral Judgment in Old Age

Abstract

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.