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Who engages with moral beauty?

Authors:
  • Lewis-Clark State College and Baha'i Institute of Higher Education

Abstract and Figures

Aristotle considered moral beauty to be the telos of the human virtues. Displays of moral beauty have been shown to elicit the moral emotion of elevation and cause a desire to become a better person and to engage in prosocial behavior. Study 1 (N = 5380) shows engagement with moral beauty is related to several psychological constructs relevant to moral education, and structural models reveal that the story of engagement with moral beauty may be considered a story of love and connectedness; it is uniquely predictive of caring for, being empathic of, loving, and valuing benevolence toward others. Study 2 (N = 542) demonstrates that the personality trait of engaging with moral beauty moderates sus-ceptibility to elevation. These studies suggest that encouraging students to engage with moral beauty might increase their desire to become better persons and to do good. Conver-gent with other research showing that moral emotions motivate moral behavior, we suggest that moral education programs increase their focus on developing engagement with moral beauty. Who engages with moral beauty? Aristotle viewed human virtues as beautiful, and some have argued that 'an educa-tion in beauty can be a training in the love of virtue' (Iris Murdoch, as cited in Winston, 2006, p. 285). Sachs (2002) noted that to kalon, which means 'the beau-tiful,' has mistakenly been translated as 'noble' in most translations of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Sachs adds that 'the beautiful,' as described by Aristotle, is not simply an object for philosophic contemplation, but is the source of moral action. A person of good character——one who puts the moral virtues into action——can see the truly beautiful in themselves and others, and knows that the beautiful is the end or highest good of human behavior. We term the kind of
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Who engages with moral beauty?
Rhett Diessner
a
*, Ravi Iyer
b
, Meghan M. Smith
c
and
Jonathan Haidt
d
a
Lewis-Clark State College, Idaho, USA;
b
University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
USA;
c
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA;
d
Stern School of Business, New York
University, New York, USA
Aristotle considered moral beauty to be the telos of the human virtues. Displays of moral
beauty have been shown to elicit the moral emotion of elevation and cause a desire to
become a better person and to engage in prosocial behavior. Study 1 (N= 5380) shows
engagement with moral beauty is related to several psychological constructs relevant to
moral education, and structural models reveal that the story of engagement with moral
beauty may be considered a story of love and connectedness; it is uniquely predictive of
caring for, being empathic of, loving, and valuing benevolence toward others. Study 2 (N=
542) demonstrates that the personality trait of engaging with moral beauty moderates sus-
ceptibility to elevation. These studies suggest that encouraging students to engage with
moral beauty might increase their desire to become better persons and to do good. Conver-
gent with other research showing that moral emotions motivate moral behavior, we suggest
that moral education programs increase their focus on developing engagement with moral
beauty.
Keywords: moral beauty; elevation; virtues; moral education
Who engages with moral beauty?
Aristotle viewed human virtues as beautiful, and some have argued that ‘an educa-
tion in beauty can be a training in the love of virtue’ (Iris Murdoch, as cited in
Winston, 2006, p. 285). Sachs (2002) noted that to kalon, which means ‘the beau-
tiful,’ has mistakenly been translated as ‘noble’ in most translations of Aristotle’s
Nichomachean Ethics. Sachs adds that ‘the beautiful,’ as described by Aristotle, is
not simply an object for philosophic contemplation, but is the source of moral
action. A person of good character—— one who puts the moral virtues into
action—— can see the truly beautiful in themselves and others, and knows that the
beautiful is the end or highest good of human behavior. We term the kind of
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rhett Diessner, Lewis-Clark
State College, Division of Social Science, 500 8th Avenue, Lewiston, ID 83501, USA. Email:
diessner@lcsc.edu
Journal of Moral Education, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2013.785941
Ó2013 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
beauty that Aristotle refers to as moral beauty. In this article we ask: who responds
most strongly to moral beauty? What are the demographic and personality traits of
a person who is more easily moved by witnessing moral beauty in others?
The emotion of moral elevation and the trait of engaging with moral
beauty
The emotional reaction to moral beauty has been described by poets for thousands
of years, but only recently has it been studied by experimental psychologists, who
call it ‘moral elevation’ (or simply ‘elevation’). Moral elevation is elicited by witness-
ing acts of virtue, or ‘moral beauty’ (i.e. displays of charity, gratitude, courage, etc.;
Haidt, 2003). Elevation produces pleasant sensations in the body, including a warm
feeling in the chest, and sometimes tingles on the skin and a lump in the throat
(Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Elevation has been shown to cause lactating women to hug
their children, nurse them, and release milk into a nursing pad, suggesting that the
hormone oxytocin may be released during experiences of elevation (Silvers & Haidt,
2008). Elevation, like oxytocin, seems to promote social bonds.
A variety of studies have indicated that elevation is associated with an action
tendency of wanting to become a better person, to emulate the acts of virtue
observed, and to serve others (Algoe & Haidt, 2009; Cox, 2010; Haidt, 2000,
2003, 2006; Landis et al., 2009; Vianello, Galliani, & Haidt, 2010). Additionally,
three studies with random assignment to experimental and control groups
have illustrated a causal effect for elevation on prosocial behavior (Aquino,
McFerran, & Laven, 2011; Freeman, Aquino, & McFerran, 2009; Schnall, Roper,
& Fessler, 2010).
These empirical findings affirm Thomas Jefferson’s insight into the emotional
response to virtue. In a letter to a friend in which Jefferson advised the friend to buy
some novels and plays for his new library—— despite the contemporary belief that
such works were only suited for women—— Jefferson justified his advice by discussing
the moral-educational benefits that come from reading great works of fiction:
[E]very thing is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of
virtue. When any…act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our
sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire
in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary when we see or
read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive an abhor-
rence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous disposi-
tions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.
( Jefferson, [1771] 1975, p. 350)
If Jefferson is correct, then experiences of elevation may be useful in moral
education programs. Repeatedly witnessing moral beauty and then feeling a
visceral and elevating response may motivate people to become better human
beings, and may increase the frequency of unselfish and prosocial behavior.
But before considering designing moral education curricula to explicitly include
elevating experiences, it would be important to know whether all students are
2R. Diessner et al.
equally ‘elevatable,’ or whether there are personality traits and demographic vari-
ables that make some more prone to elevation and others immune to it. In Haidt’s
experience studying elevation and lecturing on it, he has often found elevation ‘vir-
tuosos’—— some of whom cry more easily than they’d like to when hearing stories
about virtue—— and also, occasionally, individuals who don’t recognize the emotion
as something they have experienced.
There is a trait, or character strength (cf. Peterson & Seligman, 2004), which
we term engagement with moral beauty, and which we hypothesized would predict
who is more, or less, elevatable (see Study 2 below). This trait has been assessed
in people using the Engagement with Beauty Scale (EBS) (Diessner, Davis, &
Toney, 2009; Diessner, Parsons, Solom, Frost, & Davidson, 2008; Diessner, Rust,
Solom, Frost, & Parsons, 2006), which has subscales measuring three beauty
related traits: engagement with natural beauty, engagement with artistic beauty,
and engagement with moral beauty. Elevation is an emotional state; engagement
with moral beauty, on the other hand, is the disposition to experience elevation, a
trait for which there are individual differences (Diessner et al., 2008).
So far, across studies of elevation, there has only been one consistent quality
linked to being prone to elevation and that is gender. Women have shown slightly
higher levels of elevation and susceptibility to elevation (Algoe & Haidt, 2009;
Freeman et al., 2009; Landis et al., 2009). Likewise, in studies with the EBS
(Diessner et al., 2008), women score higher on the Engagement with Moral
Beauty subscale than men (Diessner et al., 2008; and Study 1 reported below), as
well as higher levels on the two other subscales of the EBS, the Engagement with
Natural Beauty subscale and the Engagement with Artistic Beauty subscale.
The trait of engagement with beauty may be considered a strength of the virtue
of transcendence (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), and Haidt and Keltner (2004)
hypothesized that appreciation of beauty would be correlated with other character
strengths related to transcendence. Indeed, two small studies using the EBS
(Diessner et al., 2008), with student samples, have found that engagement with
moral beauty positively correlates with several transcendent traits, such as hope
(Diessner et al., 2006), spiritual transcendence and gratitude, and negatively with
materialism (Diessner et al., 2008). A prior study (Smith, Mayton, & Diessner,
2009) also found a moderately strong correlation between empathy and
engagement with moral beauty; empathy appears to be related to the virtue of
Love/Humanity (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Therefore, we anticipated that
engagement with moral beauty would, with a much larger sample than previous
studies, show moderate relationships with traits related to the virtue of transcen-
dence and the virtue of love.
Aims of the present studies
Because studies have shown the causal influence of elevation on moral behavior,
including the desire to become a better person and to serve others (Aquino et al.,
2011; Freeman et al., 2009; Schnall et al., 2010), and because displays of moral
Who engages with moral beauty? 3
beauty are the eliciting stimulus for experiences of elevation (Algoe & Haidt,
2009), we believe that nurturing students to develop their personality trait of
engagement with moral beauty may be a useful strategy in moral education
programs.
Therefore, Study 1 extends prior studies on the personality trait of engagement
with moral beauty by greatly enlarging the sample size and diversity of the research
participants, and the number of personality traits examined. In Study 1, we hope to
develop a comprehensive profile of the kind of person who more easily engages with
moral beauty. We also examined whether engagement with moral beauty would be
differentiated from engagement with natural and artistic beauty. Would engagement
with any kind of beauty correlate with moral personality traits and virtues, or does
engagement with moral beauty have a specific relationship with moral traits? We also
examined whether engagement with beauty is a trait more highly associated with the
virtue of transcendence, or with the virtue of love; in fact, most of the measures
noted in Study 1 and Table 1 were chosen for this study due to their association with
either transcendence or love. Of special interest is the relationship between moral
identity and engagement with moral beauty; previous research has demonstrated
that moral identity centrality predicts intensity of elevation and the ability to remem-
ber acts of moral goodness (moral beauty) (Aquino et al., 2011).
Based on the establishment of a correlation between engagement with moral
beauty and prosocial motivations, Study 2 below examined whether the disposition
toward engagement with moral beauty potentially moderates susceptibility to ele-
vation, using an experimental design. In particular, we asked whether people who
say that they are highly responsive to moral beauty do, in fact, show greater emo-
tional responsiveness to viewing a morally elevating video, including increased
motivation to help others.
Study 1: the personality engaged by moral beauty
To examine the relationships of engagement with moral beauty with other personal-
ity constructs, the full EBS (Diessner et al., 2008) was posted on YourMorals.org in
2009. We examined the correlations of the three EBS subscales with 12 common
measures of personality and morality that were posted on YourMorals (see Table 1)
and have a theoretical basis for relating to the EBS. Rather than simply noting the
large number of significant correlations, our goal was to establish discriminative
validity, by understanding the pattern of correlations. For all measures we’ll look
across the three subscales of the EBS, identifying which measures show a stronger
correlation with engagement with moral beauty than with the other two subscales
(measuring engagement with natural and artistic beauty). For each measure with
subscales, we will pick out which subscale of the personality measure shows the
strongest correlation with engagement with moral beauty. To give some advance
notice, in the hope of helping the reader navigate through Table 1: the general story
is that engagement with moral beauty has a special relationship with measures of
love, caring, benevolence, and moral identity.
4R. Diessner et al.
Table 1. Relationships between the Engagement with Moral Beauty subscale of the EBS, and
various traits/values/moral constructs, when controlling for gender and politics
Trait/Value/Construct MSDNatural Artistic Moral Partial^
Political Affiliation (n= 4672) 2.80 1.52 .10
.19
.05
Moral Foundations (n= 4696)
Care 3.47 0.84 .27
.23
.34
.26
Fairness 3.56 0.73 .12
.14
.19
.12
Sanctity .64 1.11 .04 .05
.15
.19
Loyalty 2.32 0.87 .01 .04 .10
.12
Authority 2.31 0.91 .00 .09
.07
.09
Big Five Personality (n= 3498)
Agreeableness 3.58 0.63 .26
.17
.34
.31
Extraversion 3.08 0.85 .17
.17
.19
.16
Openness 4.01 0.60 .30
.45
.18
.20
Conscientiousness 3.45 0.72 .08
.00 .07
.06
Neuroticism 2.84 0.81 .03 .05 .00 .03
Schwartz Values (n= 2594)
Benevolence 4.49 1.05 .31
.24
.44
.38
Spirituality 3.95 1.61 .39
.27
.42
.39
Universalism 4.56 1.20 .45
.35
.34
.28
Tradition 2.09 1.34 .11
.00 .20
.21
Conformity 3.10 1.34 .12
.00 .19
.20
Security 3.69 1.34 .09
.01 .17
.15
Self-Direction 5.10 0.95 .20
.19
.08
.06
Stimulation 3.36 1.58 .17
.18
.08
.07
Achievement 4.24 1.10 .01 .01 .06 .05
Power 1.91 1.34 .09
.05 .06 .06
Hedonism 3.79 1.47 .02 .09
.08
.09
Identification w/Humanity (n= 1762)
World 3.18 0.88 .41
.42
.49
Community 3.00 0.86 .27
.23
.43
.39
Country 3.04 0.78 .24
.19
.43
.41
Love of Humanity (n= 497)
All humanity 5.01 1.03 .51
.41
.59
.54
Friends 5.12 1.03 .25
.21
.33
.30
Family 4.76 1.11 .24
.17
.27
.24
Romantic 5.44 1.03 .20
.20
.22
.22
Empathy (n= 1,460) 3.73 0.78 .48
.43
.59
.55
Adapted Good Self (n= 207)
Moral 3.18 0.52 .45
.17
.47
.40
Pragmatic 3.05 0.41 .13 .04 .09 .06
(continued)
Who engages with moral beauty? 5
Method
Participants
Between May 2009 and April 2010 5380 participants completed the EBS at Your-
Morals.org. The sample consisted of 49% women; mean age was 39.7 years (SD
= 15.5); 85.2% reported that they live in the United States; reported ethnicity was
73% white, 12% non-white, and 15% not reporting. The various samples used in
analyses reported below are subsets of this overall sample, and they generally
reflect these demographics.
Previous studies using the EBS to assess engagement with moral beauty were
limited to sample sizes ranging from N= 52 to 206. Those participants came from
a single state in the USA (Idaho) and comprised undergraduate college students,
with a mean age of 22 to 23 years (SDs=6–8 years; Diessner et al., 2006, 2008,
2009); the sample used here has over 5000 more participants than any previous
study, has a mean age of nearly double that of previous studies, and a SD of 15
years. Although we did not record state of residence for this study, YourMorals.
org participants typically come from every state in the USA and a variety of other
countries. The sample is certainly not a representative sample as it tends to be bet-
ter educated and more politically liberal than the national average. Still, it is a
more diverse and materially different sample compared to samples used in previ-
ous research. Moreover, examination of this sample has previously replicated a
great deal of psychological findings (e.g. Iyer, Koleva, Graham, Ditto, & Haidt,
Table 1 (Continued)
Trait/Value/Construct MSDNatural Artistic Moral Partial^
Moral Identity (n= 202)
Internal 5.97 1.15 .46
.23 .56
.50
Symbolic 3.63 1.42 .32
.27
.55
.51
Total 4.80 1.12 .42
.28
.62
.57
Gratitude (n= 1166) 5.75 1.09 .39
.26
.46
.41
Forgiveness (n= 124)
Others 4.72 1.28 .32 .21 .54
.48
Situations 5.06 1.21 .36
.17 .43
.43
Self 4.68 1.33 .19 .13 .32 .19
Total 4.82 1.03 .35
.21 .51
.41
Connected to Nature (n= 1649) 3.68 0.80 .57
.36
.36
.28
Satisfaction with Life (n= 2240) 4.53 1.41 .13
.06 .12
.12
Note: ^ = the partial correlation with engagement with moral beauty after controlling simultaneously
for gender and politics; the ns dropped 10–14% for the partial correlations due to some participants
not marking one of the seven main political affiliation choices; due to the many correlations we set
=p< .001 (two tailed).
6R. Diessner et al.
2012), indicating that this sample is comparable to samples used in previous
research.
Measures
The EBS (Diessner et al., 2008) is a 14-item self-report scale indicating various
levels of cognitive and emotional engagement concerning natural, artistic, and
moral beauty. The EBS uses a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from very
unlike me to very much like me, on questions such as, ‘When perceiving beauty in
nature I feel changes in my body, such as a lump in my throat, an expansion
in my chest, faster heartbeat, or other bodily responses.’ ‘When perceiving beauty
in a work of art I feel something like a spiritual experience, perhaps a sense of one-
ness or being united with the universe or a love of the entire world,’ and ‘When
perceiving an act of moral beauty I find that I desire to become a better person.’
Previous studies of the EBS with an American sample yielded a total score internal
consistency of .91, and test-retest reliability of .79; EBS Natural Beauty subscale a
of .80; Artistic Beauty subscale aof .88; and the EBS Moral Beauty subscale aof
.89; test-retest reliability correlations ranged from .67–.79 on the subscales (Diess-
ner et al., 2008). International studies with translations of the EBS, in Iran,
Germany, Cyprus and Croatia, as well as in English among bilingual Samoans,
demonstrated as from .85–.94, and showed a similar factor structure across cul-
tures (Richel et al., 2008). A variety of concurrent and predictive studies have
shown the validity of scores obtained when using the EBS (Diessner et al., 2006,
2008, 2009). Using the current sample (n= 5380 participants from YourMorals.
org), we found the following reliabilities: Natural Beauty subscale: a= .81; Artistic
Beauty subscale: a= .86; Engagement with Moral Beauty subscale a= .91.
To spare readers the cognitive load of holding descriptions of 12 personality
measures in memory, descriptions of those 12 measures of personality and moral-
ity included in Table 1 will be given in the relevant parts of the Results section.
Results
Table 1 shows the simple Pearson correlations of each trait with the three sub-
scales of the EBS. Our focus is on the engagement with moral beauty column. But
because gender differences have been found for engagement with moral beauty,
and because a liberal political affiliation is well known to positively correlate with
measures of appreciation of beauty (McCrae & Sutin, 2009), we will provide par-
tial correlations that control for these two variables. What does the trait of engage-
ment with moral beauty tell us, beyond knowing a person’s sex and politics?
These partial correlations are shown in the fourth column. Readers may focus on
either the third or fourth columns; they tell essentially the same story, and we will
not discuss the small differences between them.
Who engages with moral beauty? 7
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In regard to missing values, in all comparisons made below, any participant who
failed to complete more than 20% of items was excluded from analysis for any
particular measure. Otherwise scale scores were averaged across items. In regard
to statistical assumptions, scatter plots indicated that the variables noted in Table 1
are bivariately normally distributed, and thus have linear relationships; and in
regard to the partial correlations, are multivariately normally distributed.
Gender and age
Women (N= 2299) scored higher (M= 33.9; SD = 7.2) than men (N= 2397; M
= 30.6; SD = 8.3) on the EBS Moral Beauty subscale; t(4694) = 14.37,
p< .001, d= .42; and showed a very similar difference on the engagement with
natural and artistic beauty subscales as well (results of the Levene test indicate that
equal variance between the two groups can be assumed). This reinforces Haidt
and Keltner’s (2004) brief review of gender issues in appreciation of beauty and
excellence; they note that women tend to score higher on connectedness in
self-transcendence and are more prone to moral elevation. It also corroborates a
previous study (Diessner et al., 2008), which found women’s EBS scores to be
significantly higher than men’s scores.
Age correlated .07 with the EBS Moral Beauty subscale (N= 5380, p< .001);
the partial correlations of engagement with moral beauty, with the various con-
structs in Table 1, after controlling for age, show very little change in value.
Political ideology
All subjects completed a measure of their political ideology when they registered at
YourMorals.org. The measure offered a seven-point scale ranging from 1 = very
liberal,4=moderate,to7=very conservative. The measure also offered three addi-
tional choices, for those who did not want to place themselves on the 7-point
scale: Don’t know/not political,Libertarian,orOther. In this analysis we only used
participants’ scores who placed themselves on the 7-point scale (n= 4,713); that
sample included 20.7% very liberal, 40.7% liberal, 17.2% slightly liberal, 10.3%
moderate, 4.6% slightly conservative, 5.0% conservative, 1.5% very conservative;
thus the sample was 78.6% liberal and 11.1% conservative. As shown in Table 1,
engagement with moral beauty has a very low correlation with political affiliation
in our study, although the correlations with natural and artistic beauty are some-
what larger.
Twelve personality scales
The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ ). The MFQ (Graham et al., 2011) has
three ‘judgment’ and three ‘relevance’ questions (using six-point Likert-type scales,
from strongly disagree to strongly agree, and from not at all relevant to extremely relevant,
respectively) for each of the factor analytically validated subscales of Care/harm (a=
.69; note all as reported here, and on the 11 other personality scales below, are from
8R. Diessner et al.
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the current study), Fairness/cheating (a= .65), Authority/subversion (a= .74), Loy-
alty/betrayal (a= .70), and Sanctity/degradation (a= .84). Due to care being the
behavioural manifestation of love, and Platonic theory’s emphasis on the special
relationship between love and beauty (Nehamas, 2007), we expected engagement
with moral beauty to correlate the highest with the Care/harm foundation of the five
foundations. Indeed, the EBS Moral Beauty subscale had a special relationship with
the Care foundation. The correlation of Care with moral beauty was higher than
with the other kinds of beauty, and the correlation of moral beauty with Care was
higher than with the other four moral foundations.
Five Factor Model of Personality (BFI). The BFI (John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991)
is a 44-item measure of five personality traits, using a five-point Likert-type scale
ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The BFI measures the classic traits
of Extraversion (a= .87), Agreeableness (a= .78), Conscientiousness (a= .84),
Neuroticism (a= .85), and Open-mindedness (a= .81). As shown in Table 1,
engagement with moral beauty has a moderate correlation with Agreeableness (the
other kinds of beauty had low correlations with it), and small correlations with
Extraversion and Openness; of the five big traits, Agreeableness is theoretically the
one most closely associated with caring and love (DeYoung, Weisberg, Quilty, &
Peterson, in press).
Haidt and Keltner (2004) predicted that appreciation of beauty in general
would be related to Agreeableness (p. 548). Haidt and Keltner also anticipated
that Extraversion would ‘correlate modestly’ (p. 548) with appreciation of beauty,
and it does. They also predicted that appreciation of beauty would have a ‘strong
relationship’ (p. 548) with Openness, and although engagement with moral beauty
has a weak correlation with Openness, engagement with artistic beauty had a
higher correlation with Openness than any form of beauty with any of the big-five
traits. Moral beauty has previously been found to have no correlation with mea-
sures of depression (Diessner et al., 2008; Diessner, Brink, & Rust, 2010), thus it
is consistent that no relationship with Neuroticism was found in this study.
Schwartz Value Survey (SVS). The SVS (Schwartz, 1992) is a widely used mea-
sure of universal cross-cultural values. The version of the SVS used here has 58
items, each item a value with a short definitional phrase accompanying it, and par-
ticipants rated to what degree the value is a guiding principle in their life. The rat-
ings range from -1 (opposed to my values) through 0 (not important), 3 (important),
to 7 (of supreme importance). The 58 values are combined into the 10 major value
types determined by Schwartz (1992) using smallest-space analysis (see Table 1
for names of the 10 types).
Of the various values shown in Table 1, Universalism (a= .77), Benevolence
(a= .74), and Spirituality (a= .57) were the values most highly associated with
engagement with moral beauty, and the only correlations of moderate size (the
correlations with the other eight values were low to weak). Benevolence and
Who engages with moral beauty? 9
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Spirituality also correlated higher with engagement with moral beauty than the
other kinds of beauty, whereas Universalism correlated highest with engagement
with natural beauty (there are items concerning nature on the Universalism sub-
scale). Schwartz (1992) defines the Benevolence value as a ‘concern for the welfare
of close others in everyday interaction’ (p. 11), in other words, loving locally; and
the Universalism value as focused on ‘understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and
protection for the welfare of all people and for nature’ (p. 12), a self-transcendent
value. The value of Spirituality is an eleventh type, derived from SVS items con-
cerning inner harmony, a spiritual life, and meaning in life. Haidt and Keltner
(2004) predicted that the character strength of ‘appreciation of beauty and excel-
lence’ (p. 537) would be related to spirituality and transcendence. It appears
engagement with any kind of beauty, including moral beauty, lifts us out of our-
selves, and assists us to transcend ourselves.
Identification with All of Humanity Scale (IWAHS). The IWAHS (McFarland,
Webb, & Brown, 2012) has 27 items, nine for each of three subscales measuring
identification with community (a= .91), country (a= .88), and the whole world (a
= .91); the questions on the IWAHS are scored on a five-point Likert-type scale
ranging from not at all to very much. Because McFarland et al. (2012) partially
defined identification as feeling ‘love toward’ (p. 852) others and also noted its
strong relationship with the transcendental value of universalism, we anticipated a
high correlation between the IWAHS and the EBS moral subscale. As shown in
Table 1, those who engage in noticing moral beauty identify with their community,
with their nation, as well as with the whole world; the EBS moral beauty subscale
correlated higher with all IWAHS subscales than did the other kinds of beauty.
Different Types of Love Scale (DTLS). As the philosopher Alexander Nehamas
states, invoking Plato, ‘Beauty is the object of love…’ (p. 99). In the case of the
DTLS (Campos, Keltner, & Gonzaga, 2002) the object of love concerns four dif-
ferent categories of love objects: friends (a= .83), family (a= .87), romantic part-
ners (a= .84), and all humanity (a= .88). The DTLS’s 40 items are scored on a
7-point Likert-type scale from not at all to completely.
Based on Platonic theory concerning love and beauty (Nehamas, 2007) we
expected all four love subscales to correlate highly with engagement with moral
beauty. As shown in Table 1, engagement with moral beauty has a strong correla-
tion with love of all humanity; a moderate correlation with love of friends; and low
correlations with love of family and romantic partners; and correlated higher with
all four love subscales than did the other kinds of beauty.
Empathy (IRI-EC). To measure empathy we used the Empathic Concern subscale
(a= .84) of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI-EC) (Davis, 1983). The IRI-
EC has seven items scored on a five-point scale ranging from strongly agree to
strongly disagree. Based on a past study on empathy and engagement with moral
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beauty (Smith et al., 2009), and with empathy being a foundation for love, we
anticipated a high correlation between empathy and engagement with moral
beauty. As shown in Table 1, engagement with moral beauty has a strong relation-
ship with empathy, an ability closely related to love and caring; and correlated
higher with empathy than the other two kinds of beauty.
Adapted Good-Self Scale (AGSS). The AGSS, revised by Barriga, Morrison, Liau,
and Gibbs (2001), has two subscales, one measuring the relevance of moral con-
cepts to the self (a= .79), and the other to the relevance of pragmatic, non-moral
abilities (a= .48). The measure presents a list of eight moral and eight non-moral
positive traits and subjects are asked to rate their importance to their self-concept
from 1 = not important to 4 = extremely important. Based on Aquino et al.’s (2011)
research on moral identity and elevation, we anticipated a strong relationship
between the moral subscale of the AGSS and the EBS Moral Beauty subscale. As
shown in Table 1, engagement with moral beauty is moderately associated with
seeing one’s self as a good person (and more so than the other kinds of beauty);
and is unrelated to identifying with pragmatic or non-moral excellence.
Moral Identity Scale (MIS). The MIS (Aquino & Reed, 2002) consists of 10 items,
five each for the moral action subscale (Symbolization [a= .84]) and the moral
self-concept subscale (Internalization [a= .91]) both measuring moral self-rele-
vance. Subjects rate each item’s importance on a 5-point scale from 1 = strongly
disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Based on Aquino et al.’s (2011) research on moral
identity and elevation, we anticipated strong relationships between both MIS sub-
scales and the EBS Moral Beauty subscale. Engagement with moral beauty
strongly correlated with viewing one’s self as a moral actor (Symbolization) and
with moral traits as central to self-image (Internalization); and correlated higher
with both MIS subscales than did the other kinds of beauty.
Gratitude (GQ-6). The GQ6 (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002) is a six-item
measure of gratitude and thankfulness (a= .83), scored on a seven-point Likert-
type scale (1 = strongly disagree,7=strongly agree). As shown in Table 1, disposi-
tional gratitude has a moderate correlation with engagement with moral beauty; and
correlated higher with it than the other kinds of beauty. Haidt and Keltner (2004)
note that ‘gratitude…is one kind of responsiveness to moral beauty’ (p. 545), thus
anticipating that measures of gratitude would significantly associate with measures
of appreciation of moral beauty. Gratitude is a self-transcendent character strength,
and it appears that grateful people tend to see the inner beauty of others.
Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS). The HFS (Thompson et al., 2005) is an
18-item questionnaire that measures dispositional forgiveness and consists of three
six-item subscales: Forgiveness of Self (a= .88), Forgiveness of Others (a= .90),
and Forgiveness of Situations (a= .88); each item is rated on a seven-point scale,
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from 1 = almost always false of me to 7 = almost always true of me. Because forgive-
ness is related to the virtue of transcendence we anticipated that the HFS and the
EBS moral subscale would have substantial relationships. As shown in Table 1,
engagement with moral beauty has a strong correlation with forgiving others
(which may be seen as a self-transcendent trait), and moderate correlations of for-
giving self and situations; and correlated higher with all three forgiveness subscales
than the other kinds of beauty.
Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS). The CNS (a= .87; Mayer & Frantz, 2004)
measures the trait of being emotionally connected to the natural world with a
14-item scale scored on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree,
5=strongly agree). Congruent with Kant’s statement that an interest in the beauty
of nature was always a sign of a ‘good soul’ ([1790] 1987, p. 165), and because
we associate being ‘green,’ with being moral, and connectedness to nature is trait
related to transcendence, we expected a substantial relationship between engage-
ment with moral beauty and feeling connected to nature; on the other hand,
because the CNS focuses on nature, we anticipated that it would correlate higher
with natural beauty than with either the moral beauty or artistic beauty subscales.
As expected, the correlation with engagement with natural beauty and the CNS
was strong whereas the correlations with engagement with moral beauty and
engagement with artistic beauty were moderate.
Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). The SWLS (a= .89; Diener, Emmons,
Larsen, Griffin, 1985) is a brief measure consisting of five items scored on a
seven-point Likert-type scale (1 = strongly disagree,7=strongly agree), created to
reflect life satisfaction and well-being as a whole. Past studies have shown that
engagement with, or appreciation of beauty has only weak correlations with SWL
(Diessner et al., 2008; Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004). As shown by the low
correlations in Table 1, apparently engaging with beauty may not be an effective
path to satisfaction with life for our sample either.
Engagement with moral beauty and social desirability
Perhaps the trait of engaging with moral beauty correlates with moral motivation
due to a positive response mind-set among research participants. Is responding in
a socially desirable manner an influence on the responses to the engagement with
moral beauty subscale of the EBS? To answer this question we examined correla-
tions of data from subsamples of the 5380 subjects from Study 1 who had com-
pleted the EBS, and four measures related to morality: the MIS (Aquino & Reed,
2002), the AGSC (Barriga et al. (2001), and the Fairness and Care subscales of
the MFQ (Graham et al., 2011), while controlling for social desirability with the
Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS) (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960).
The MCSDS is a 33-item questionnaire, measuring whether respondents have a
socially desirable response bias, with each item marked true or false.
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As can be seen in Table 2, the relationships between engagement with moral
beauty, and moral identity, moral good self, and levels of Care and Fairness moral
foundations, are not mediated by social desirability in these particular subsamples.
Structural models showing the unique predictive power of engagement
with moral beauty
Table 1 shows that engagement with moral beauty is potentially associated with
two major virtues: Love (characterized by caring for others, being empathic
towards others, agreeableness, loving all humanity, and valuing benevolence) and
Transcendence (characterized by gratitude, forgiveness, connectedness to nature,
and valuing universalism and spirituality). However, in order to better place the
engagement with moral beauty construct within a nomological network, we con-
structed structural models to test these observations and determine whether
engagement with moral beauty is particularly related to dispositions related to love
and/or dispositions related to transcendence. In particular, we were interested in
whether we could group these traits together and whether considering the three
factors of the EBS separately fit the data better than considering each factor as
indicative of a general dispositional sensitivity to beauty. A series of structural
models were created and compared using AMOS 20 for Windows.
In order to examine the independent relationship between engagement with
moral beauty, as opposed to engagement with natural or artistic beauty, with con-
structs related to love of others, we created a structural model depicted in Figure 1.
This model was a relatively good fit to the data (Chi-Squared = 385.2, df = 17, p
< .001, CFI = .981, RMSEA = .010) and the relationship between engagement
with moral beauty and love of others (beta = .50) was independent of and higher
than the relationships between engagement with natural (beta = .18) and artistic
(beta = .07) beauty. Further, this model, which considers engagement with natu-
ral, artistic, and moral beauty as separate constructs, was a better fit to the data
than an alternative model whereby engagement with natural, moral, and artistic
beauty were considered part of a unitary construct (Chi-Squared = 808.0, df = 19,
Table 2. Correlations between Engagement with Moral Beauty, moral identity, and the care &
fairness moral foundations when controlling for social desirability
Trait/State/Value NMoral Beauty Partial Correlation^
Moral Identity Scale 472 .55
.52
Good Self Moral 141 .50
.48
Care Foundation 594 .45
.45
Fairness Foundation 594 .31
.30
Note: ^ = the partial correlation with moral beauty after controlling for social desirability; due to
multiple correlations
= p <. 001.
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p< .001, CFI = .958, RMSEA = .014), even though both models were relatively
good fits to the data.
In contrast, several models grouping variables that were indicative of transcen-
dence (e.g. gratitude, forgiveness, connectedness to nature, and valuing universal-
ism and spirituality) in various combinations as indicative of a single latent
construct, were poor fits to the data (CFI < .80) and generally engagement with
natural beauty was the best predictor in these models, even in cases where items
relating specifically to nature were removed.
General discussion/summary of Study 1
Engagement with beauty is a trait that is philosophically and culturally associated
with the feminine (Steiner, 2001), and our empirical data bear this out; women
score substantially higher than men on engagement with moral, natural, and artis-
tic beauty. However, when we controlled for gender and political affiliation, in the
relationship between engagement with moral beauty and 12 other measures of
Figure 1. The unique predictive power of Engagement with Moral Beauty
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values and traits, it made little difference on the size of the correlations. It appears
that the trait of engagement with moral beauty has its own unique relationships
with the moral and trait constructs shown in Table 1.
Based on both the structural and correlational models, it appears the story of
engaging with moral beauty may well be considered a story of love. In terms of the
five moral foundations (Graham et al., 2011), Care is the most closely related to
love, and engagement with moral beauty moderately correlated with it; whereas
the correlations with the other four foundations were low. The dominant classical
personality factor, for those high in the trait of engagement with moral beauty, is
Agreeableness, and of the big five traits, Agreeableness best represents compassion
and love (DeYoung et al., in press); and again, engagement with moral beauty cor-
related moderately with it, but had only low correlations with the other four big
traits. Likewise, the value of Benevolence had a higher correlation with engage-
ment with beauty than any other of the 10 values in Schwartz’ system, and Benev-
olence represents love of close others more than any of the other 10 values.
Two of the highest correlations extant on Table 1 were engagement with moral
beauty with love of all humanity, a direct measure of love, and with empathy, an
essential foundation for love. On the DTLS (Campos et al., 2002), love of all
humanity showed a strong correlation with engagement with moral beauty,
whereas the other three subscales, measuring love of romantic partners, friends,
and family were weak to low medium correlations—— thus indicating that those
high in the trait of engagement with moral beauty are more concerned about uni-
versal love than love for one’s immediate connections. This appears to contradict
the oxcytocin/bonding theory of elevation and engagement with moral beauty (Sil-
vers & Haidt, 2008). However, it does fit with the finding that one of the highest
correlations in Table 1 is with identification with all humanity (McFarland et al.,
2012). Perhaps the story of engagement with beauty is more about a love and
connectedness to humanity in general, than about affiliation with close others.
Additionally, engagement with moral beauty had higher correlations with all
these measures of love than did engagement with natural beauty or engagement
with artistic beauty. Discriminatively, the lowest correlations with engagement with
moral beauty in Table 1 are with qualities that seem unrelated to love, such as the
Authority moral foundation, the big-five traits of Neuroticism, or the values of
Achievement, Power, and Hedonism.
Finally, structural models confirm that considering engagement with moral
beauty as uniquely and independently indicative of variables that load on a unitary
‘love’ construct is a good fit to our data. Perhaps these findings validate Neha-
mas’s (2007) emphasis that Plato considered beauty to be the object of love. Thus,
moral educators who are concerned with cultivating the virtue of Love may find
focusing upon engaging their students with the moral and inner beauty of others
to be beneficial.
The single highest correlation in Table 1 was between engagement with moral
beauty and moral identity. This implies that the moral self schema of those strong
in the trait of engagement with moral beauty is more cognitively accessible than
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for those low in the trait of engagement with moral beauty. Aquino et al.’s (2011)
research, with their social cognitive model of moral identity, indicates that situa-
tions in which subjects observed acts of moral beauty (‘acts of uncommon good-
ness’ [p. 705]) increased cognitive access to their moral identity. Thus ‘when
people are exposed to acts of uncommon moral goodness [acts of moral beauty],
those whose moral identity is more central to their self-definition assign greater
psychological weight, relevance, and value to these actions compared with people
whose moral identity is less self-defining’ (p. 705). It seems likely that the relation-
ship between the trait of engagement with moral beauty, and the many of the posi-
tive moral traits noted in Table 1, as well as the relationship between engagement
with moral beauty and elevation, are mediated or moderated by moral identity.
Aquino et al. (2011) also demonstrated that moral identity predicts prosocial
behavior, and Shao, Aquino, and Freeman (2008) have reviewed evidence that
moral behavior is consistently determined by moral identity. Therefore an impor-
tant direction for future research would be to examine whether repeated exposure
to acts of moral beauty, or other means of increasing students’ trait of engaging
with moral beauty (viz. Diessner et al., 2006) would increase students’ level of
moral identity centrality (or vice versa; would helping students increase their moral
identity centrality lead to deeper and more frequent engagement with moral
beauty).
A limitation of Study 1 is that the correlations of the 12 personality measures
are all subsamples of the overall N= 5380 sample, ranging from an nof 4672 to
an nof 124. Thus, findings of statistical significance with some scales and not oth-
ers may have nothing to do with the nature of the relations among the scales but
with the use of somewhat different samples. Likewise, the social desirability corre-
lations were from a subsample, and thus we cannot state with confidence that
socially desirable responding was not occurring with the subjects completing any
particular scale noted in Table 1.
Another limitation is that our sample is not representative of the entire popula-
tion, as it is an online sample of more educated and more liberal, participants. As
well, participants were conscious of the fact that they were engaging in moral psy-
chology research due to the nature of the website visited.
It is notable that trait engagement with moral beauty had only a weak positive
correlation with satisfaction with life (SWL); however, a past study with a sample
of college students also produced a correlation of .14 between these two variables
(Diessner et al., 2008), and Park et al. (2004) similarly found weak correlations
between the character strength of appreciation of beauty and excellence with
SWL. Would not those high in engagement with moral beauty, and thus more sus-
ceptible to experiencing elevation (see Study 2 below), experience higher levels of
SWL? We do not know why they don’t, but perhaps those sensitive to social and
interpersonal moral beauty are also sensitive to moral ugliness, and find much
about our social world to cause less satisfaction with life (perhaps it bi-modal; they
are more satisfied with the beauty, and less satisfied with the ugliness, and thus
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there is little relationship to satisfaction with life). Investigating this would be
worthwhile future research.
Study 2: Susceptibility to elevation: the role of the trait of engagement
with moral beauty
Algoe and Haidt (2009) have differentiated between admiration for non-moral
excellence (impressive skills) and elevation as a response to moral beauty. Indeed,
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies have demonstrated that the
brain shows distinctively different responses to elicitors of moral elevation
compared to elicitors of admiration of physical skills (Immordino-Yang, McColl,
Damasio, & Damasio, 2009). Algoe and Haidt randomly assigned college students
to watch one of three videos: (1) elevation: a boy who established a homeless shel-
ter in Philadelphia (N= 39); (2) non-moral admiration: Michael Jordan flying
through the air to dunk basketballs (N= 46); and (3) amusement: clips of three
stand-up comedians (N= 45) (this was a control condition). They found that the
elevation and admiration videos both induced high levels of self-described feelings
of admiration, which were not significantly different by condition. However, the
elevation video caused higher levels of gratitude, love, and the feeling of a lump in
the throat than did the admiration of skill video. Likewise, the elevation video
caused significantly higher levels of desire to be a better person and a desire to do
good for others whereas the admiration video caused a higher level of a desire for
success and a higher level of awe.
In Study 2, we partially replicated their study using different videos and a larger
and more heterogeneous sample, anticipating the same pattern of results concern-
ing the variables of feeling a lump in the throat, awe, admiration, gratitude, love,
desire to be a better person, desire to do good, and desire for success.
Additionally we sought to answer the question of whether the trait of engage-
ment with moral beauty moderates the relationship between moral elevation and
the desire to become a better person and to do good deeds. We hypothesized that
those higher in the trait of engaging with moral beauty would be more susceptible
to experiencing the emotion of moral elevation.
Method
Participants
The experiment was completed by 542 participants between July and September
2011 at YourMorals.org. The 241 subjects in the elevating video condition were
49% women, with a M
age
=32(SD = 14.3); 76% were from the US. The 301
subjects in the non-moral excellence video condition were 49% women, with M
age
=33(SD = 16.3); 78% were from the US. Seven participants engaged in the
experiment, but failed to complete the dependent measures and were excluded
from the analyses.
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Procedure
Participants were randomly assigned to watch either a non-moral excellence video
of Masato Akamatsu making an amazing baseball catch (the Admiration condition;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlS-0jml0kU; 1:09 minutes duration) or a video
of Sara Tucholsky hitting a homerun, but damaging her knee at first base. In the
Tucholsky video, two members of the opposing team then altruistically and spon-
taneously carried her around the bases so that she could score her first and final
homerun of her college baseball career, even though that homerun helped contrib-
ute to their own team losing the game (the Elevation condition; http://www.you-
tube.com/watch?v=jocw-oD2pgo; 6:17 minutes duration).
Measures
The EBS (see Study 1 above) was completed by the participants either before or
after they watched their randomly assigned video. There appears to be no
sequencing effect; the N= 66 who completed the EBS before watching the non-
moral admiration video had a mean EBS Engagement with Moral Beauty score of
5.2 (SD = 1.34), and the N= 235 who took the EBS after had score of 5.4 (SD =
1.26); a t-test showed no significant difference. More importantly, the N= 57 who
took the EBS before watching the morally elevating video had a mean EBS
Engagement with Moral Beauty score of 5.4 (SD = 1.25), and the N= 184 who
took it after also had a mean score of 5.4 (SD = 1.37), showing no difference.
After watching their assigned video, participants completed Likert-type scales
indicating to what level they experienced a lump in the throat, awe, admiration,
gratitude, love, desire to be a better person, desire to good for others, and desire
for success. All questions were answered on seven-point scales, anchored with 1 =
not at all, and 7 = a great deal (similar to the scales used by Algoe & Haidt, 2009).
Results
Comparing means of the Likert-type scales showed the elevation video caused
higher levels of admiration, gratitude, love, wanting to be a better person, wanting
to do good for others, and the feeling of a lump in the throat. The admiration of
skill video caused a higher level of awe. There was no difference in regard to the
desire for success. See Table 3.
Multiple regression analysis was used to test if the Moral Beauty subscale, video
condition, and the interaction between Moral Beauty score and video condition,
significantly predicted participants’ endorsement of the item ‘wanted to do some-
thing good for others.’ All variables were centered before conducting these analy-
ses. The results of the regression indicated the three predictors explained 34.2% of
the variance (adjusted R
2
= .338, F(3,531) = 91.39, p< .001). It was found that
Moral Beauty subscale scores significantly predicted wanting to do good (b= .19,
p< .001), as did the interaction between engagement with Moral Beauty and the
18 R. Diessner et al.
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video condition (b= .51, p< .001). Figure 2 illustrates that participants who were
higher (+1SD) in the disposition to engage with moral beauty reported wanting to
do good for others, particularly in the condition where they watched the moral
video. Participants who were lower (-1SD) in the disposition to engage with moral
beauty were still significantly affected by the moral video (p <.001), though the
effect was not as pronounced as for those higher in engagement with moral beauty
(see Figure 2). Engagement with artistic beauty did not predict wanting to do
good (p= .14), nor did scores interact with the video condition (p= .60). Engage-
ment with natural beauty did predict wanting to do good (b= .11, p< .05), but
importantly, this subscale did not interact with the video condition (p= .18).
Likewise, it was found that the Moral Beauty subscale scores, video condition,
and the interaction between Moral Beauty score and video condition, significantly
predicted participants’ ratings of the item ‘wanted to become a better person.’ The
results of the regression indicated the three predictors explained 24.2% of the vari-
ance (adjusted R
2
= .238, F(3,531) = 56.31, p< .001). It was found that Moral
Beauty subscale scores significantly predicted wanting to become a better person
(b= .17, p= .001), as did the interaction between engagement with Moral Beauty
and video condition (b= .39, p< .001). Figure 3 illustrates that participants who
scored higher (+1SD) in engagement with moral beauty were particularly likely to
report wanting become a better person, specifically in the condition where they
watched the moral video. Participants who scored lower (-1SD) in engagement
with moral beauty were marginally affected by the moral video (p = .08). Engage-
ment with artistic beauty did not predict wanting to become a better person
(p= .81), nor did scores interact with the video condition (p= .28). Engagement
with natural beauty marginally predicted wanting to be a better person (b= .09,
p= .08), but scores did not interact with the video condition (p= .17).
Table 3. Variables differentiated by elevating and non-moral excellence videos.
Variable Elevation Video
Mean
SD Non-moral Excellence
Video Mean
SD d
Lump in throat 4.65 2.19 1.96
⁄⁄⁄
1.55 –1.45
Admiration 5.74 1.65 5.28
⁄⁄
1.69 –.27
Gratitude 4.74 2.06 2.32
⁄⁄⁄
1.70 –1.29
Love 4.61 2.08 2.04
⁄⁄⁄
1.51 –1.44
Better person 4.55 2.06 2.82
⁄⁄⁄
1.95 –.87
Do good for others 4.96 2.03 2.62
⁄⁄⁄
1.85 –1.21
Awe 4.57 2.05 5.25
⁄⁄⁄
1.72 .36
Success 3.85 2.07 3.75 2.14 .05
Note: df = 541; means are from seven point scales, with higher numbers indicating higher self-
reported levels of the variable; t-tests were used with
⁄⁄
p= .002;
⁄⁄⁄
p< .001; with Bonferroni correc-
tion all pvalues remain < .01, except admiration, p= .016.
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Figure 2. Engagement with Moral Beauty and the desire to do good
Figure 3. Engagement with Moral Beauty and the desire to be a better person
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Discussion
Our results replicate Algoe and Haidt’s (2009) study: we found the elevation video
caused higher levels of feeling a lump in the throat, gratitude, love, desire to be a
better person, and desire to do good for others (and all with large effect sizes), rel-
ative to the admiration video. Although Algoe and Haidt found no significant dif-
ference between levels of admiration by condition, we found a small difference
that was significant (very small effect size), with participants in the elevation condi-
tion feeling somewhat more admiration. Algoe and Haidt also found that those
watching the admiration of skill video reported higher levels of wanting success,
whereas our two groups showed no difference on that variable. Overall our study
replicated and extended Algoe and Haidt’s findings with different video content, a
larger sample (N= 542 versus N= 84), and a more heterogeneous sample (a large
mixed internet sample versus college students). However, the current sample,
while more diverse, is still not representative of the entire population, as it is an
online sample of more educated participants. As well, participants were conscious
of the fact that they were engaging in moral psychology research due to the nature
of the website visited. Future research should seek to replicate these effects in less
affluent, more naı¨ve, non-college student populations.
A possible limitation of our study is that the two stimuli videos were of differing
length, with the admiration condition video being 1:09 minutes, and the elevation
condition video being 6:17. Does length influence level of engagement with vid-
eos? A simple regression analysis of pilot data (Smith, 2010) of responses to vari-
ous moral emotion inducing videos indicated that video length explained 1.3% of
the variation in self-reported emotional engagement, a very small amount (adjusted
R
2
= .013, F(1, 1470) = 19.69, p< .001). However, video length showed a small
negative association with emotional engagement scores; the shorter the video, the
higher the emotional engagement with the video (b= -.12, p< .001). Shorter vid-
eos could be beneficial in that they do not dilute the emotion by including scenes
of extra, non-emotion eliciting behaviors. In our study, the longer video (elevation
condition) produced higher emotional engagement scores than the shorter video
(admiration condition); thus, the video condition may, in fact, be more influential
in the engagement outcome. Nevertheless, it may be worthwhile to replicate our
study with similar length videos.
Our hypothesis that engagement with moral beauty moderates susceptibility to
potentially elevating experiences was confirmed. As can be seen in Figures 2 and
3, people low in the trait experienced relatively little influence from the elevating
video on their desire to do good or become a better person, whereas those high in
the trait were strongly influenced. Neither engagement with natural beauty nor
engagement with artistic beauty interacted with our experimental manipulation,
indicating discriminant validity for our hypothesis. The implication for moral edu-
cation is substantial. It may be that helping students become more aware of, spe-
cifically, the moral beauty of others may lead them to be more motivated to
become a good person and do more good deeds for others.
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General discussion
People who have the trait of engagement with moral beauty appear to have mor-
ally beautiful personalities; they are grateful, caring, empathic, agreeable, and for-
giving. They identify with all humanity, love all humanity, value universalism and
benevolence, and have strong moral identities. Moral beauty appears to be
uniquely related to love of, and connectedness to, others. Moral beauty engagers
are more susceptible to the moral emotion of elevation—— morally beautiful acts of
virtue are more likely to cause them to desire to become a better person, and to
desire to do good.
As our two studies demonstrate, there is human variation in levels of engage-
ment with moral beauty and with susceptibility to potentially elevating experiences.
If a moral educator sees value in students increasing their levels of engagement
with beauty, what could be done? On the curricula aspect, teachers can include,
and highlight, acts of moral beauty in the progress of science (e.g. the courage of
scientists who knew that their culture would be hostile to their findings); in history
and social studies highlighting the roles of leaders who authentically cared for and
sacrificed for their group, or stood up for justice in their community; in language
arts classes selecting stories that illustrate elevation eliciting virtues, such as ‘acts
of charity, gratitude, fidelity, generosity, or any other strong display of virtue’
(Algoe & Haidt, 2009, p. 106); and in physical education classes telling stories of
athletes who demonstrated such virtues. On the methodology aspect of moral edu-
cation, teachers may have students keep a ‘beauty log’ of their own experiences of
witnessing acts of moral beauty in their everyday lives, and sharing their logs with
other students in small or large group dialogue. Quasi-experimental research shows
that keeping such logs may increase trait levels of engagement with moral beauty
(Diessner et al., 2006).
The strong link between the virtue of love and engagement with moral beauty is
provocative for moral education programs. Further research is needed to explore
this link, in particular to study the causality: does increasing engagement with
moral beauty increase a student’s ability to love; does loving others increase the
ability to see moral beauty; is the causality bi-directional?
In closing, convergent with the research showing that moral emotions motivate
moral behavior, we suggest that moral education programs increase their focus on
developing engagement with moral beauty.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Jesse Graham, Spassena Koleva, Pete Ditto, Matt Motyl
and Sean Wojcik for their help in data collection. We also thank the Social
Science Division at LCSC, and its chair Bill Clouser, for support; and thank
Wendy Diessner for feedback on an earlier draft. This project/publication was
made possible, in part, through the support of a grant from the John Templeton
Foundation to the second author. The opinions expressed in this publication are
22 R. Diessner et al.
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those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John
Templeton Foundation.
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... Support for this account comes from findings that elevation is elicited in adults when they witness acts of moral goodness such as viewing a video clip of a person helping another, remembering witnessing another doing a charitable act, or reading a story about a moral exemplar (Algoe & Haidt, 2009;Cox, 2010;Freeman et al., 2009;Haidt, 2003;Lai et al., 2014;Schnall et al., 2010;Silvers & Haidt, 2008;. Critically, in adults, elevation is a distinctively positive emotion characterised by a feeling of upliftment, warmth in the chest, and optimism about humanity (Algoe & Haidt, 2009;Diessner et al., 2013;Haidt, 2000;Oliver et al., 2012;Schnall et al., 2010;Siegel et al., 2014;Silvers & Observing prosociality and talent in 6.5-to 8.5-year-old children 4 Haidt, 2008). To date, the evidence suggests that elevation is associated with unique psychological, physiological, and behavioral outcomes that are distinguishable from other positive moral emotions such as amusement (Silvers & Haidt, 2008), awe (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Schnall et al., 2010), happiness (Oliver et al., 2012), and gratitude (Algoe & Haidt, 2009). ...
... Furthermore, elevation has been proposed to differ from the closely related 'otherpraising' emotion admiration (Diessner et al., 2013). Elevation is argued to be specific to witnessing moral excellence such as prosociality (Schnall et al., 2010;Silvers & Haidt, 2008), whereas admiration is elicited when witnessing excellence not directly related to morality such as talent (Algoe & Haidt, 2009;. ...
... Additionally, previous research suggests that the relation between elevation and prosocial behavior is often moderated or mediated by other variables (Diessner et al., 2013; Observing prosociality and talent in 6.5-to 8.5-year-old children 35 Ellithorpe et al., 2015;Thomson & Siegel, 2013, 2017. For example, Schnall and Roper (2012) showed that only participants who engaged in a self-affirmation task (e.g., reminded themselves of previous prosocial behavior) engaged in increased prosocial behaviors after exposure to an elevation inducing stimulus. ...
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Helping and seeing others being helped elicits positive emotions in young children but little is known about the nature of these emotions, especially in middle childhood. Here we examined the specific emotional characteristics and behavioral outcomes of two closely related other-praising moral emotions: elevation and admiration. We exposed 182 6.5- to 8.5-year-old children living in New Zealand, to an elevation- and admiration-inducing video clip. Afterwards children’s emotion experiences and prosocial behaviour was measured. Findings revealed higher levels of happiness, care, and warmth after seeing prosociality in others (elevation condition) and higher levels of upliftment after seeing talent in others (admiration condition). We found no differences in prosocial behavior between the elevation and admiration conditions. This is the first study to assess elevation in childhood and offers a novel paradigm to investigate the role of moral emotions as potential motivators underlying helping.
... Extant research has demonstrated robust links of elevation to prosocial motivation. For instance, individuals who scored higher on trait proneness to elevation were more likely to endorse higher love of humanity, agreeableness, forgiveness, and moral identity (Diessner et al., 2013) as well as perceived daily virtue . Similarly, experimental inductions of elevation have increased motivation and behavior to connect with or help others (e.g., Freeman et al., 2009;Han et al., 2017;Schnall et al., 2010) or emulate the person featured in elevating videos or recalled memory (Algoe & Haidt, 2009). ...
... However, all elevation studies that have explicitly included S/R variables have reported positive linkages between them. For example, individuals scoring higher on trait elevation have reported higher levels of spiritual transcendence (Diessner et al., 2008;Landis et al., 2009) and greater endorsement of valuing spirituality (Diessner et al., 2013). Analogously, higher daily levels of elevation in clinically anxious or depressed individuals were associated with valuing spirituality (Erickson & Abelson, 2012). ...
... La experiencia de la elevación moral ante actos de bondad y belleza moral, en el marco del dinamismo de la acción humana, puede ser un elemento que lleva a la persona a trascender e incide en su desarrollo moral, en orden a su plenitud o florecimiento. El compromiso con la justicia y el comportamiento pro-social están vinculados a la experiencia de la belleza moral (Diessner et al., 2009;Diessner et al., 2013). ...
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Se presenta una guía didáctica que permita leer/enseñar de manera integrada una obra de arte y un texto ético-jurídico (tomando por caso La Declaración Universal sobre Bioética y Derechos Humanos) con el fin de que el lector haga tanto una experiencia estética como ética que le eleve moralmente. La reflexión ética de un documento se puede potenciar con la ayuda de la contemplación estética. Al contemplar ambos “textos” conjuntamente brota una experiencia bioestética sobre la belleza y el sentido de la vida. Se utiliza para ello un modelo pedagógico desarrollado en la Universidad Francisco de Vitoria: despertar, descubrir y decidir.
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