Preschoolers use the means-ends structure of intention to make moral judgments

Are there any moral universals? Theories that view morality as culturally constructed do not necessarily anticipate finding moral universals. Theories that view morality as emerging from a “universal moral grammar” necessarily do. Yet, to date, there has not been sufficient evidence to confidently claim that any part of moral psychology is universal. However, a series of recent studies has shown that adults in over 40 countries use the same (perhaps surprising) moral rule: the “means principle.” Developmental evidence of the early emergence of the means principle would provide additional support that this principle is universal. In this paper, we indeed find that children (N=192 across 2 studies; Mage=5.1 yrs.) use the means principle in their moral judgments. This finding also has important implications for the understanding of moral development; it reveals that children can use an agent’s means, and not just her goal, to make a moral judgment.