The Kraemer Effect Reconsidered

People tend to judge that agents bring about the ends more intentionally than the means. In three experiments, we test a new explanation for this so-called Kraemer Effect: people tend to judge that agents bring about the ends more intentionally than the means because they think that the agent’s actions increase the probability of the ends more than the means, even though their objective probabilities are the same. In Experiment 1, we replicated the Kraemer Effect in English and German. In Experiment 2, we aimed to manipulate people’s perceived probability increase of bringing about the ends and test whether this would decrease the size of the Kraemer Effect. In Experiment 3, we aimed to manipulate people’s perceived probability increase of bringing about the means and test whether this would decrease the size of the Kraemer Effect. In both experiments, we found no evidence that manipulating the perceived probability increase of bringing about the means or the ends decreased the size of the Kraemer Effect. Overall, we found no evidence that a probability-raising account of intentionality explains the Kraemer Effect.