ABSTRACT
Most theories of moral judgments distinguish between acts and outcomes. According to these theories, moral judgments are either primarily based on the evaluation of the acts or the outcomes with multi-system theories allowing for both possibilities. Here we argue that it is not only the acts and outcomes that determine moral evaluations but also the causal relations linking the acts with their outcomes. Causal relations influence moral judgments by shifting attention to aspects of intervictim relations. We report three projects that demonstrate the usefulness of this framework in tasks that range from moral judgments about trolley problems to basic force-dynamic interpretations of simple perceptual and linguistic scenes.
