Whose Mind Matters More: The moral agent or the artist? The role of intent in ethics and aesthetics

Whose Mind Matters More: The moral agent or the artist? The role of intent in ethics and aesthetics Angelina Hawley-Dolan (hawleyan@bc.edu), Liane Young (liane.young@bc.edu) Department of Psychology, Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA Abstract The current study directly investigates the similarities and differences in theory of mind for moral judgment versus aesthetic evaluation. We target the role of intent, the mind of the moral agent or the artist, i.e. whether the moral act or work of art was intentional or accidental, for objective judgments (e.g., quality) versus subjective judgments (e.g., preference). We show that (1) intent matters more for objective versus subjective judgments, in ethics and aesthetics, and (2) overall, intent matters more for moral judgments than aesthetic evaluations. These findings suggest that an objective-subjective dimension may similarly describe judgments in both ethics and aesthetics, and that in general we may be more influenced by the mind of the moral agent than by the mind of the artist when evaluating their impact on the world. Keywords: intent; aesthetic judgment; moral judgment; social cognition; theory of mind Mental states matter across a number of contexts, including moral judgment (Borg, Hynes, Van Horn, Grafton, & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2006; Young, Cushman, Hauser, & Saxe, 2007; Cushman, 2008; Mikhail, 2007) and artistic evaluation (Gelman & Bloom, 2000; Bloom & Markson, 1998; Hawley- Dolan & Winner, 2011). People speculate about the harmful or helpful intentions of their social partners, and about an artist’s mental state (i.e. what the artist planned and intended) when responding to the art itself (Bloom, 2004; Donald, 2006; Freeman & Adi-Japha, 2008; Hawley-Dolan & Winner, 2011). Here, we provide a direct comparison of the role of mental states in people’s intuitive “subjective” versus “objective” judgments of moral actions versus works of art. Recent research suggests that, for art, mental states may matter differently depending on whether people are instructed to provide an “objective” evaluation (e.g., of the quality of the art) or a “subjective” evaluation (e.g., personal preference) (Hawley-Dolan & Winner, 2011). In particular, subjective judgments were based more on the use of “preferred colors”, while objective judgments were explained by appeal to “the purposeful use of space” and “the intentionality of line”. Furthermore, objective but not subjective judgments were sensitive to information about the artist’s identity (e.g., a young child, a chimpanzee, or a professional artist). Finally, participants often reported “liking” an image while simultaneously judging it to be objectively “bad art”. The current study directly investigates the role of intent (i.e. whether a work of art was created intentionally or accidentally) for objective and subjective aesthetic judgments. A parallel body of work suggests that moral judgments depend critically on mental state inferences: people assign more blame for intentional versus accidental harms and more praise for intentionally versus accidentally helpful actions (Cushman, 2008; Pizarro, Uhlmann, & Salovey, 2003; Young, Scholz, & Saxe, in press). Little is known, however, about the possible distinction between subjective and objective moral judgments, or the impact of intent on subjective versus objective judgments. Recent research has revealed individual differences in moral objectivism versus subjectivism; some people tend to be moral objectivists, taking ethical beliefs to express factual truths, while others tend to be moral subjectivists, treating fact and value as independent (Goodwin & Darley, 2008; Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003). Key questions remain: In the moral domain, is there a reliable cognitive division between subjective and objective judgments? Can we “like” a person whom we judge to be morally inferior, just as we can enjoy an image that we won’t count as “good” art? Specifically, are subjective versus objective judgments governed by distinct cognitive rules (e.g., intentionality)? The current study investigates both the distinction between subjective versus objective judgments for the domains of art and morality, in addition to the role of intent for both kinds of judgments in both domains. We present two experiments that show that (1) intent matters more for objective versus subjective judgments of both moral actions and works of art, and (2) overall, intent matters more for moral judgments than aesthetic evaluations. Experiment 1 Experiment 1 investigated whether (1) intent matters more for objective versus subjective judgments of works of art and morally relevant actions (e.g., harmful and helpful actions), and (2) intent matters more for moral judgments versus aesthetic evaluations. Methods Participants Participants were 31 undergraduate psychology majors at Boston College, who participated for course credit (11 males, 20 females, ages 17-27 years, M =19.4).