Variations in judgments of intentional action and moral evaluation across eight cultures.

In the side-effect effect, individuals tend to judge bad side effects as more intentional than good side effects (left panels), and harmful outcomes more worthy of blame than helpful outcomes worthy of praise (right panels). Across highly contrasted populations we found limited generalizability of the original side-effect effect, and even a trend toward inversion of the effect in two rural, traditional cultures (Samoa and Vanuatu) where participants were more likely to judge the helpful side effect as intentional and praiseworthy (shaded bars).