What is the study about: The paper examines whether people’s judgements differ when encountering morally lucky and morally unlucky agents. In Study 2 participants read two vignettes describing the same event (mother leaving her child unattended near the bathtub), but the outcome differs. In the lucky condition the child is safe and in the unlucky one it drowns. Participants rate two agents in terms of wrongness, blame, permissibility, and punishment.
Suggested number of participants: 100
Can it be conducted online: YES
Mandatory data analyses: Repeated measures ANOVA
Note: Sensitive content – one of the vignette describes a child passing. This can also prolong the IRB procedure.
The CREP team advice: This study has already been replicated many times, so adding extension hypothesis is beneficial here.
Full paper link: https://philpapers.org/archive/KNENLF.pdf
(The mentors are obliged to read the full paper before committing to the replication)
More information *click*
Participants read the following vignettes in this order:
V1 – Anna is at home, giving her 2-year-old son a bath. She fills the bath, while her son stands near the tub. The phone rings in the next room. Anna tells her son to stand near the tub while she answers the phone. Anna believes her son will stand near the tub for a few minutes and wait for her to return. Anna leaves the room for 5 min. When Anna returns, her son is in the tub, dead, face down in the water.
V2 – Beth is at home, giving her 2-year-old son a bath. She fills the bath, while her son stands near the tub. The phone rings in the next room. Beth tells her son to stand near the tub while she answers the phone. Beth believes her son will stand near the tub for a few minutes and wait for her to return. Beth leaves the room for 5 min. When Beth returns, her son is still standing near the tub, where she left him. The boy then enjoys his bath.
Responses are provided by answering the following four questions:
It was just as wrong for Anna to leave her son as it was for Beth.
Anna is just as blameworthy as Beth for leaving her son.
It was just as impermissible for Anna to leave her son as it was for Beth.
Anna deserves just as much punishment as Beth for leaving her son.
Results obtained in the paper:
The two agents were judged to be equally wrong, blameworthy and impermissible. However, judgments differed in relation to the punishment – the unlucky agent was thought to deserve much higher punishment than the unlucky one.