2025 Theses Doctoral

Prioritizing Intent in Judgments of Intergroup and Intragroup Harms

Yonas, Daniel

Researchers in moral psychology often investigate harmful behaviors at the interpersonal level but rarely consider how moral processes might play out in group contexts. Meanwhile, researchers studying intergroup processes rarely consider mechanisms rooted in moral cognition. Integrating work on moral psychology and intergroup relations, five studies examined how Black and White adults (and, in the case of Study 5, children) view intent when making moral judgments about intergroup and intragroup harms.

We presented participants with a series of vignettes describing intergroup harms (e.g., a White person refusing to sit next to a Black person) or intragroup harms (e.g., a White person refusing to sit next to another White person). Participants then responded to questions about how the behaviors should be punished (Studies 1, 3, 4, and 5), the morality of the behavior (Studies 2, 4, and 5), and the degree to which the transgressor's intent mattered (all).

White participants prioritized transgressors' intent more than did Black participants when evaluating intergroup harms (Studies 1, 3, and 4) and punished these harms less (Studies 2-5). These results did not emerge for intragroup harms, suggesting that White individuals may reason about harms that implicate their in-group members as perpetrators differently from harms that do not carry this implication.

Taken together, these studies suggest that the difference in the emphasis placed on intent in intergroup contexts versus intragroup contexts originates in later childhood, continues into adulthood, is distinct from strict ingroup preference, and highlights the importance of considering morality and intergroup bias in concert.