People attribute purposes to all kinds of things, from artifacts to body parts to human lives. This invites the question of whether the cognitive processes underlying purpose attributions are domain-general or domain-specific. In three studies (total N = 13,720 observations from N = 3,430 participants), we examined the effects of four factors on purpose attributions in six domains: artifacts, social institutions, animals, body parts, sacred objects, and human lives. Study 1 found that original design (i.e., what something was originally created for) and present practice (i.e., how people currently use it) each influence purpose attributions in all six domains, though their relative importance differs substantially across domains. Study 2 found that effectiveness (i.e., whether something is good at achieving a goal) and morality (i.e., whether the goal is good) each influences purpose attributions, and in the same way across domains. Finally, Study 3 revealed that, within domains, the impacts of original design and present practice depend on which entity plays the role of original designer versus present user, suggesting that the apparent inter-domain differences in the impacts of these two factors might have been illusory. Overall, there are at least some respects in which purpose attributions are strikingly similar across what might seem to be very different domains.
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