Control-based moral responsibility judgments are modulated by the age of the judged

Adults hold beliefs about children’s developmental timelines and intuitively adjust their moral evaluations based on children’s ages, attributing varying degrees of responsibility depending on the context. A common assumption is that children’s limited control explains their reduced moral responsibility --- but do adults' factual beliefs about children’s control align with their moral judgments? In three online vignette studies with UK and US adults (N = 481), participants assessed the likelihood of blameworthy behaviors in characters aged 2 to 40 years and judged their moral responsibility when these behaviors were explicitly attributed to a lack of specific types of control. Our findings suggest that the relationship between perceived control and moral responsibility is shaped by age: while participants expected a strong link between behavior likelihood and responsibility in adulthood, this association was absent in early childhood. This pattern indicates that early childhood may be viewed as a general phase of reduced moral responsibility, independent of adults’ beliefs about children’s actual levels of behavioral and cognitive control.