PMC

Mean liking rating for intentional good, lucky, unlucky, and intentional bad actors in Study 7 as rated by Japanese children. Higher scores indicate greater liking and error bars indicate standard error of the mean.

Mean proportion of responses in which participants selected the predicted response in Study 1. The predicted response was selecting the lucky or intentional good actor to perform a good action and selecting the unlucky or intentional bad actor to perform a bad action.

Mean proportion of times in Study 5 that each actor was selected as the “nicer” one across 6 lucky vs. unlucky items and across 6 intentional good vs. intentional bad items in which the option “exactly the same” was also given.

Mean proportion of responses in which participants selected the predicted response in Study 3. The predicted response was selecting the sibling of the lucky or intentional good actor to perform a good action and selecting the sibling of the unlucky or intentional bad actor to perform a bad action.

Mean number of times in Study 4 that children at each age selected the lucky or intentional good actor as nicer than the unlucky or intentional bad actor. A score of 1.5 equals chance. Asterisks indicate the mean differed significantly from chance.

Proportion of Japanese children’s responses across items in which they preferred the new member of the intentional good or intentional bad group in the intentional good vs. intentional bad comparisons (left panel) or the member of the lucky or unlucky group in the lucky vs. unlucky comparisons (right panel) in Study 8.