Named after the experimental philosopher Joshua Knobe, the Knobe Effect describes the fact that people's moral sense lead to some counter-intuitive judgments.
Knobe asked nearly 100 random people in a Manhattan park a question about the following story.
The vice-president of a company went to the chairman of the board and said, "We are thinking of starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment."
The chairman of the board answered, "I don’t care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let’s start the new program."
They started the new program. Sure enough, the environment was harmed.
Knobe asked them if the chairman intentionally harmed the environment.
88% of people said yes.
Knobe then asked (different) people a question about the same story except that instead of harming the environment, the new program helped the environment.
77% of the people say the chairman did not intentionally help the environment.
The literature is full of experiments showing weird contradictions like this. Â It's a wonder the human race gets anything done at all.
The following link is to the original paper describing the experiment.
Embedded Link
http://www.unc.edu/~knobe/Side-Effect.pdf
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Am I correct in assuming that the story is exactly the same in both cases ?
If so, all intention is focused on profit and willingness to acceptance of anticipated collateral damage. Benefits are never in the picture, never intended or considered. Any benefit that accrues is rationally external to the issues and irrelevant to the questions.
Humans operate in what appear to be, at best inconsistent, and at worst "illogical" ways.  An off-the-cuff attribution analysis here would suggest that bad outcomes are attributed to a stable, internal source ( viz., the company's chairman), while the good outcomes are attributable to unstable, external sources (and not to the chairman).  In short, it's easier (and emotionally more satisfying) to fix  blame on another, and to seldom give credit to another where it might be due.