A slightly different but related topic - Chomsky on why (humanitarian) intent doesn't matter: https://youtu.be/syikF6gNJDk

I don't recall the exact quotation nor the source, so there may some factual inaccuracies in what I'm about to write, but I think I read somewhere that under bushido (the samurai code), no distinction was made between someone returning a wallet because it was the 'right thing to do' and someone returning a wallet for less altruistic reasons (fear of being seen as a thief by others, etc).

This would seem to support the hypothesis that not all cultures value intent as much.

It's a very interesting episode, If you're curious I would advice to listen to it in full. On this topic I perceived 'western' as a proxy for individualistic societies. The argument is indeed that these very collectivistic societies do not consider intent as an important factor. Within those societies shame is also a very important emotion versus the individualistic 'guilt'. One other interesting finding was that self-confidence has no correlation with life satisfaction in those societies.

A country like China would actually be in the middle on that scale, and it was also discussed how it's rapidly becoming more individualistic due to a number of policies, most notably the one-child policy.