Responsibility requires causation. But there are different kinds of causes. Some are connected to their effects; others are disconnected. We ask how children’s developing ability to distinguish causes relates to their understanding of moral responsibility. We found in Experiment 1 that when Andy hits Suzy with his bike, she falls into a fence and it breaks, 3-year-old children treated ‘caused’, ‘break’ and ‘fault’ as referring to the direct cause, Suzy. By 4, they differentiated causes: Andy ‘caused’ the fence to break, it’s his ‘fault’, but Suzy ‘broke’ it. We found in Experiment 2 that when the chain involved disconnection, 3-year-olds focused only on the direct cause. Around 5 they distinguished causes, saying that the disconnecting cause ‘caused’ an object to break, it’s their ‘fault’, but the direct cause ‘broke’ it. Our findings relate to the outcome-to-intention shift in moral responsibility and suggest a more fundamental shift in children’s understanding of causation.
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