Moral mentalist or behavioralist: The locus of morality in Euro-American and Chinese cultures

Everyday moral judgment, legal decisions, and scholarly research within Western societies have supported the notion that people moralize mental states. However, emerging evidence suggests that the moral weight assigned to mental states—compared to behaviors—varies across societies. Yet, such cross-cultural comparisons have not been systematically examined in an East–West context. Across four studies (N = 1,339), we investigated cultural differences between Euro- American and Chinese individuals in the relative moral weight assigned to mental states versus behaviors. We found that Chinese participants were more likely to endorse strict liability—the belief that moral and legal judgments should be based on behavioral outcomes regardless of mental states (Study 1); to judge accidental harm more harshly than harmful intent, and to equate low- and high-intent harms (Study 2); and to evaluate more leniently cases in which individuals harbor immoral mental states but behave morally (Studies 3 and 4). These cross-cultural differences emerged across a wide range of moral concerns (Study 2) and applied to both cognitive and affective mental states (Study 3). These cross-cultural differences may reflect divergent cultural models of mind (Study 4) and were mediated by the perceived normality of incongruent mind-behavior experience (Study 3) and the perceived strength of societal norms (Study 4). Contributing to the growing literature on the “weak moral intent hypothesis,” our work shows that such cultural differences can be observed even among modern, industrialized societies and broadens the scope by examining diverse moral domains, types of mental states, and explanatory mechanisms.