The emergence of sensitivity to biocentric intentions in preschool children

- For the first time, we studied preschoolers' sensitivity to agents' biocentric intentions.
- When evaluating environmental improvement, children preferred biocentric intentions.
- When evaluating environmental damage, children did not prefer biocentric intentions.

For the first time, we assessed 5-year-old children's choices between two different ways of extending ethics to natural entities: the anthropocentric and the biocentric views. For the former, nature has to be preserved because it helps humans' interests, for the latter it has to be preserved because of its intrinsic value. Children evaluated the moral rightness or wrongness of a decision taken by an agent acting with either a biocentric or an anthropocentric intention. Children were also asked whether the agent deserved a reward or a punishment for having caused, as a side-effect of his actions, a damage or an improvement of the environment. Preschoolers judged the agent who caused accidentally an ecological benefit more worthy of a reward when he had a biocentric intention than when he had an anthropocentric intention. This suggests an early emerging sensitivity to the biocentric view.