Perceived intent motivates people to magnify observed harms

Existing moral psychology research commonly explains certain phenomena in terms of a motivation to blame. However, this motivation is not measured directly, but rather is inferred from other measures, such as participants’ judgments of an agent’s blameworthiness. The present paper introduces new methods for assessing this theoretically important motivation, using tools drawn from animal-model research. We test these methods in the context of recent “harm-magnification” research, which shows that people often overestimate the damage caused by intentional (versus unintentional) harms. A preliminary experiment exemplifies this work and also rules out an alternative explanation for earlier harm-magnification results. Exp. 1 asks whether intended harm motivates blame or merely demonstrates the actor’s intrinsic blameworthiness. Consistent with a motivational interpretation, participants freely chose blaming, condemning, and punishing over other appealing tasks in an intentional-harm condition, compared with an unintentional-harm condition. Exp. 2 also measures motivation but with converging indicators of persistence (effort, rate, and duration) in blaming. In addition to their methodological contribution, these studies also illuminate people’s motivational responses to intentional harms. Perceived intent emerges as catalyzing a motivated social cognitive process related to social prediction and control. Significance This paper examines how detecting harmful intent creates downstream consequences for assessing damage, magnifying its cost. If intentional harms seem worse, society may spend more money on them than on objectively more damaging unintentional harms or on naturally occurring harms. Why might this occur? Various psychological theories identify the cause as motivation; however, the presence of this motivation has been inferred indirectly. Drawing on animal-model research, we present more direct evidence for blame motivation, and discuss how it may help to explain the magnification of intentional harms. This approach acknowledges the nonrational biases in damage estimates and potential policy priorities.