The Knobe Effect: Asymmetry of Intentionality Attribution or Social Stereotyping?

Abstract

The Knobe effect is an empirically well-documented asymmetry in the everyday attribution of intentions to human actions under the influence of moral assess­ments of their consequences. It is that actions with negative moral consequences are much more easily intuitively viewed as intentional than actions with positive moral consequences. This asymmetry (an important achievement of “experi­mental philosophy”) affects the prospects for research in ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action, requiring adjustments to some fundamental ideas about intentionality. According to its common interpretation, one must either regard intentions as implicitly related to the moral assessment of con­sequences, or regard ordinary language means of describing actions as intrinsi­cally asymmetrical. The authors propose an alternative hypothesis that the Knobe effect is only a reaction to social stereotypes. This hypothesis is supported by an experiment that reproduces the Knobe effect and demonstrates how it can be eliminated and inverted under the influence of different stereotypes. Thus, the ef­fect turns out to be not fundamental, but contingent and local, associated with specific social prejudices about motives. This makes it safe for traditional philosophical approaches to the analysis of intentional action.