“You changed your action!”: Adults’ moral evaluation and preference of inconsistent actors

Abstract

Infants prefer an agent who shows consistently prosocial actions over an agent who shows consistently antisocial actions. However, when there is an inconsistency in an agent’s behavior, infants show no preference toward the agent. The present research tested adults to examine the developmental trajectory of abilities to evaluate inconsistent agents. Participants evaluated the morality of an agent who acts either predominantly antisocially or predominantly prosocially. They were also asked to indicate their preference for an agent. The results showed that participants significantly evaluated predominantly prosocial agent as more moral and preferred the predominantly prosocial agent. Unlike the infants, adults use probabilistic information (1) to evaluate an agent’s morality and (2) to form their own preference toward a particular agent.