Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Curiously, people assign less punishment to a person who attempts and fails to harm somebody if their intended victim happens to suffer the harm for coincidental reasons. This “blame blocking” effect provides an important evidence in support of the two-process model of moral judgment (Cushman, 2008). Yet, recent proposals suggest that it might be due to an unintended interpretation of the dependent measure in cases of coincidental harm (Prochownik, 2017; also Malle, Guglielmo, & Monroe, 2014). If so, this would deprive the two-process model of an important source of empirical support. We report and discuss results that speak against this alternative account.