Abstract: The Knobe effect is the phenomenon that the moral evaluations of the side-effect influence people’s judgment of intentionality. When the side-effect is morally good, people tend to judge the agent bring about it unintentionally. However, when the side-effect is morally bad, people tend to judge the agent as intentionally. Knobe ascribes the effect to moral considerations, while the other researchers explain the effect in terms of psychological biases, language pragmatics or the cost and profit trade-off between main aim and the side-effect. This paper proposes that the judgment basically is an attribution process and the Knobe effect shows the effects of moral judgments on mind theory. The possible mechanism under it is the autonomous and unconscious processes—— people can process all the information quickly and roughly, and the results play a role in the rational processes after.

Key words: Knobe effect, side-effect, judgment of intentionality, moral judgment