Cause and Fault

Responsibility requires causation. But there are different kinds of causes. Some are connected to their effects; others are disconnected. We ask how children’s developing ability to distinguish causes relates to their understanding of moral responsibility. We found in Experiment 1 that when Andy hits Suzy with his bike, she falls into a fence and it breaks, 3-year-old children treated “caused”, “break” and “fault” as referring to the direct cause, Suzy. By 4, they differentiated causes: Andy “caused” the fence to break, it’s his “fault”, but Suzy “broke” it. We found in Experiment 2 that when the chain involved disconnection, 3-year-olds focused only on the direct cause. Around 5 they distinguished causes, saying that the disconnecting cause “caused” an object to break, it’s their “fault”, but the direct cause “broke” it. Our findings relate to the outcome-to-intention shift in moral responsibility and suggest a more fundamental shift in children’s understanding of causation.

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