Basically it seems that people are more likely to call harmful side-effects intentional, compared to beneficial ones.
I’m not sure this really is a bias; the harmful/beneficial cases are not exact counterparts: in the harmful case one could assume that the actor needs to mentally do something—namely, ‘overcoming the moral problem’ or ‘silence his/her conscience’, which makes the harmful case indeed a bit more ‘intentional’.
It looks like this might be the one: Knobe, Joshua. 2003. “Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language”, Analysis 63: 190-194. [PDF]
Thanks.
Basically it seems that people are more likely to call harmful side-effects intentional, compared to beneficial ones.
I’m not sure this really is a bias; the harmful/beneficial cases are not exact counterparts: in the harmful case one could assume that the actor needs to mentally do something—namely, ‘overcoming the moral problem’ or ‘silence his/her conscience’, which makes the harmful case indeed a bit more ‘intentional’.