Malicious Motives or Innocent Intentions? How Moral Reactions to “Collateral Damage” Shape Perceptions of Intent in Wartime Conduct

The laws of war prohibit intentional attacks on civilians, a fact that reflects the widely held view that intentional killings are particularly egregious, far more so than incidental killings or pure accidents. Yet, recent scholarship in moral psychology shows that the relationship between intention-understanding and moral judgments can also go the other way, that is, that judgments about whether an action is right or wrong can influence the degree to which people regard the action as intentional or unintentional. Drawing on this line of research, in this article we examine how moral intuitions influence perceptions of the intent to harm civilians in war. Using vignette-based survey experiments, we look at whether complying with the international humanitarian law principles of proportionality and precaution in attacks affects intentionality attributions. Our results suggest that when soldiers are perceived as having broken these principles, people are more likely to conclude that they killed civilians intentionally.