The role of intention in 7- to 10-year-old children’s moral judgments of social robots’ actions

The 54th Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, Belgrade, Sırbistan, 29 - 31 Mayıs 2025, ss.1-2, (Özet Bildiri)

This study investigates how intention influences the moral judgments 7-to 10-year-old children assign to

social robots by comparing children’s evaluations of intentional versus unintentional actions performed by

human and robotic actors. A total of 120 participants from diverse socio-economic backgrounds are

recruited from seven public elementary schools in Istanbul. Using animated scenarios created with visual

aids on a computer, children assess moral correctness, intent, culpability, and Morally- relevant Theory of

Mind (MoToM) aspects in situations involving four distinct scenarios, each with human-robot and intentional-

unintentional variations. Questions are designed to evaluate these dimensions using 6-point Likert scales.

Data collection spans three sessions per participant. In the first two sessions, children are presented with

four stories each. In the third session, they complete TIFALDI to assess receptive and expressive language

skills, second-order ToM tasks, and the Dimensional Change Card Sort task to evaluate executive function

skills. The study employs a between-subject design for intention and a within-subject design for actor type.

Preliminary hypotheses suggest that children will attribute less blame to humans in unintentional scenarios,

while assigning equal culpability to humans and robots in intentional cases. Another hypothesis posits that

technology-savvy children may find social robots’ transgressions more acceptable. Additionally, moral

judgments are expected to be linked to second-order false belief understanding, which varies across age

groups.

This research contributes to understanding the moral and cognitive processes underlying children’s

interactions with social robots. Findings aim to inform education and technology policies, ensuring that child-

robot interactions support cognitive and moral development.