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Forming Evaluations of Moral Character: How Are Multiple Pieces of Information Prioritized and Integrated?
Abstract
Evaluating other people's moral character is a crucial social cognitive task. However, the cognitive processes by which people seek out, prioritize, and integrate multiple pieces of character‐relevant information have not been studied empirically. The first aim of this research was to examine which character traits are considered most important when forming an impression of a person's overall moral character. The second aim was to understand how differing levels of trait expression affect overall character judgments. Four preregistered studies and one supplemental study (total N = 720), using five different measures of importance and sampling undergraduates, online workers, and community members, found that our participants placed the most importance on the traits honest, helpful, compassionate, loyal , and responsible . Also, when integrating the information that they have learned, our participants seemed to engage in a simple averaging process in which all available, relevant information is combined in a linear fashion to form an overall evaluation of moral character. This research provides new insights into the cognitive processes by which evaluations of moral character are formed.
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Objective:
We introduce the concept of moral beacons-individuals who are higher in moral character than their peers and prominent within their social environment-and examine the degree to which moral beacons increase the moral awareness of their peers.
Background:
Using data from cohorts of students in graduate business education across two universities, we applied theory and methods from organizational behavior, personality psychology, and social networks analysis to test two research questions about moral beacons.
Method:
We used latent profile analysis of data from personality questionnaires and social network surveys completed by graduate business students at two universities (N = 502) to identify individuals classified as moral beacons. We used peer nominations and an in-class business case discussion exercise to assess moral influence.
Results:
Latent profile analysis identified a latent class of moral beacons in our sample. These individuals received more nominations from their peers in end-of-class surveys as guides for moral thought and action and positively impacted the moral awareness of their peers in a discussion of a difficult business case about possible lead poisoning of employees, but did not significantly change their counterparts' moral awareness in a different case.
Conclusions:
These results provide promising initial evidence that moral beacons can be distinguished from their peers by both moral character and social prominence and can act as guides for others, at times encouraging greater consideration of the moral aspects of situations and decisions. As these results are the first of their kind, we encourage further replication and investigations of moral beacons and moral influence in other settings.
Maintaining data quality on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has always been a concern for researchers. These concerns have grown recently due to the bot crisis of 2018 and observations that past safeguards of data quality (e.g., approval ratings of 95%) no longer work. To address data quality concerns, CloudResearch, a third-party website that interfaces with MTurk, has assessed ~165,000 MTurkers and categorized them into those that provide high- (~100,000, Approved) and low- (~65,000, Blocked) quality data. Here, we examined the predictive validity of CloudResearch’s vetting. In a pre-registered study, participants (N = 900) from the Approved and Blocked groups, along with a Standard MTurk sample (95% HIT acceptance ratio, 100+ completed HITs), completed an array of data-quality measures. Across several indices, Approved participants (i) identified the content of images more accurately, (ii) answered more reading comprehension questions correctly, (iii) responded to reversed coded items more consistently, (iv) passed a greater number of attention checks, (v) self-reported less cheating and actually left the survey window less often on easily Googleable questions, (vi) replicated classic psychology experimental effects more reliably, and (vii) answered AI-stumping questions more accurately than Blocked participants, who performed at chance on multiple outcomes. Data quality of the Standard sample was generally in between the Approved and Blocked groups. We discuss how MTurk’s Approval Rating system is no longer an effective data-quality control, and we discuss the advantages afforded by using the Approved group for scientific studies on MTurk.
According to the so-called Classical Theory, concepts are mentally represented by individually necessary and jointly sufficient application conditions. One of the principal empirical objections against this view stems from evidence that people judge some instances of a concept to be more typical than others. In this paper we present and discuss four empirical studies that investigate the extent to which this 'typicality effect' holds for the concept of basic needs. Through multiple operationalizations of typicality, our studies yielded evidence for a strong effect of this kind: (1) Participants tended to recall the same core examples of the concept in a free-listing task. (2) They judged some basic needs to be more typical than others. (3) The items that were judged to be more typical were listed more frequently in the free-listing task. (4) These items were listed earlier on in the free-listing task. (5) Typical basic needs, as well as non needs, were classified faster than atypical basic needs in a reaction time study. These findings suggest that the concept of basic needs may have a non-classical (e.g., exemplar or prototype) structure. If so, the quest for a simple and robust intensional analysis of the concept may be futile.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11229-022-03859-9.
Past research shows that when forming an impression of an interdependent person, perceivers are motivated to look for information relevant to their goals and interests. The present experiments examined what happens after this information-seeking stage and showed that the relevance of the target’s attributes for one’s goals and interests drives warmth impressions. Using both a scenario (Experiment 1) and realistic methodologies (Experiment 3), we showed that when the perceiver had to collaborate with a target, the more competent the target, the more perceivers anticipated success and the more the target came across as warm. By contrast, in a competition setting, the competence of the target negatively affected prospects of success and impressions of warmth. Experiment 2 further showed that the target’s competence drove warmth impressions only when perceivers attached a great value to the success of the task, suggesting that these inferences have a motivational underpinning.
People form moral impressions rapidly, effortlessly and from a remarkably young age1–5. Putatively ‘bad’ agents command more attention and are identified more quickly and accurately than benign or friendly agents5–12. Such vigilance is adaptive, but can also be costly in environments where people sometimes make mistakes, because incorrectly attributing bad character to good people damages existing relationships and discourages forming new relationships13–16. The ability to accurately infer the moral character of others is critical for healthy social functioning, but the computational processes that support this ability are not well understood. Here, we show that moral inference is explained by an asymmetric Bayesian updating mechanism in which beliefs about the morality of bad agents are more uncertain (and therefore more volatile) than beliefs about the morality of good agents. This asymmetry seems to be a property of learning about immoral agents in general, as we also find greater uncertainty for beliefs about the non-moral traits of bad agents. Our model and data reveal a cognitive mechanism that permits flexible updating of beliefs about potentially threatening others, a mechanism that could facilitate forgiveness when initial bad impressions turn out to be inaccurate. Our findings suggest that negative moral impressions destabilize beliefs about others, promoting cognitive flexibility in the service of cooperative but cautious behaviour.
People believe that their moral judgments are well-justified and as objective as scientific facts. Still, dual-process models of judgment provide strong theoretical reasons to expect that in reality moral judgments are substantially influenced by highly subjective factors such as attitudes. In four experiments (N = 645) we provide evidence that similarity-dissimilarity of beliefs, mere exposure, and facial mimicry influence judgments of moral character measured in various ways. These influences are mediated by changes in liking of the judged persons, suggesting that attitudinal influences lay at the core of moral character perceptions. Changes in mood do not play such a role. This is the first line of studies showing that attitudes influence moral judgments in addition to frequently studied discrete emotions. It is also the first research evidencing the affective influences on judgments of moral character.
We propose that methods from the study of category-based induction can be used to test the accuracy of theories of moral judgment. We had participants rate the likelihood that a person would engage in a variety of actions, given information about a previous behavior. From these likelihood ratings, we extracted a hierarchical, taxonomic model of how moral violations relate to each other (Study 1). We then tested the descriptive adequacy of this model against an alternative model inspired by Moral Foundations Theory, using classic tasks from induction research (Studies 2a and 2b), and using a measure of confirmation, which accounts for the baseline frequency of these violations (Study 3). Lastly, we conducted focused tests of combinations of violations where the models make differing predictions (Study 4). This research provides new insight into how people represent moral concepts, connecting classic methods from cognitive science with contemporary themes in moral psychology.
While moral character heavily influences global evaluations of others (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014), its causal effect on perceptions of others’ competence (i.e., one’s knowledge, skills, and abilities) is less clear. We found that people readily use information about another’s morality when judging their competence, despite holding folk intuitions that these domains are independent. Across 6 studies (n = 1,567), including 2 preregistered experiments, participants judged targets who committed hypothetical transgressions (Studies 1 and 3), cheated on lab tasks (Study 2), acted selfishly in economic games (Study 4), and received low morality ratings from coworkers (Study 5 and 6) as less competent than control or moral targets. These findings were specific to morality and were not the result of incidentally manipulating impressions of warmth (Study 4), nor were they fully explained by a general halo effect (Studies 2 and 3). We hypothesized that immoral targets are seen as less competent because their immoral actions led them to be viewed as low in social intelligence. Studies 4 and 5 supported this prediction, demonstrating that social intelligence was a more reliable mediator than perceptions of self-control or general intelligence. An experimental test of this mediation argument found that presenting targets as highly socially intelligent eliminated the negative effect of immoral information on judgments of competence (Study 6). These results suggest that information about a person’s moral character readily influences perceptions of their competence.
Decision research has experienced a shift from simple algebraic theories of choice to an appreciation of mental processes underlying choice. A variety of process-tracing methods has helped researchers test these process explanations. Here, we provide a survey of these methods, including specific examples for subject reports, movement-based measures, peripheral psychophysiology, and neural techniques. We show how these methods can inform phenomena as varied as attention, emotion, strategy use, and understanding neural correlates. Two important future developments are identified: broadening the number of explicit tests of proposed processes through formal modeling and determining standards and best practices for data collection.
Moral psychology research has highlighted several factors critical for evaluating the morality of another's choice, including the detection of norm-violating outcomes, the extent to which an agent caused an outcome, and the extent to which the agent intended good or bad consequences, as inferred from observing their decisions. However, person-centered accounts of moral judgment suggest that a motivation to infer the moral character of others can itself impact on an evaluation of their choices. Building on this person-centered account, we examine whether inferences about agents' moral character shape the sensitivity of moral judgments to the consequences of agents' choices, and agents' role in the causation of those consequences. Participants observed and judged sequences of decisions made by agents who were either bad or good, where each decision entailed a trade-off between personal profit and pain for an anonymous victim. Across trials we manipulated the magnitude of profit and pain resulting from the agent's decision (consequences), and whether the outcome was caused via action or inaction (causation). Consistent with previous findings, we found that moral judgments were sensitive to consequences and causation. Furthermore, we show that the inferred character of an agent moderated the extent to which people were sensitive to consequences in their moral judgments. Specifically, participants were more sensitive to the magnitude of consequences in judgments of bad agents' choices relative to good agents' choices. We discuss and interpret these findings within a theoretical framework that views moral judgment as a dynamic process at the intersection of attention and social cognition.
When do people see self-control as a moral issue? We hypothesize that the group-focused “binding” moral values of Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Purity/degradation play a particularly important role in this moralization process. Nine studies provide support for this prediction. First, moralization of self-control goals (e.g., losing weight, saving money) is more strongly associated with endorsing binding moral values than with endorsing individualizing moral values (Care/harm, Fairness/cheating). Second, binding moral values mediate the effect of other group-focused predictors of self-control moralization, including conservatism, religiosity, and collectivism. Third, guiding participants to consider morality as centrally about binding moral values increases moralization of self-control more than guiding participants to consider morality as centrally about individualizing moral values. Fourth, we replicate our core finding that moralization of self-control is associated with binding moral values across studies differing in measures and design—whether we measure the relationship between moral and self-control language across time, the perceived moral relevance of self-control behaviors, or the moral condemnation of self-control failures. Taken together, our findings suggest that self-control moralization is primarily group-oriented and is sensitive to group-oriented cues
Researchers interested in testing mediation often use designs where participants are measured on a dependent variable Y and a mediator M in both of 2 different circumstances. The dominant approach to assessing mediation in such a design, proposed by Judd, Kenny, and McClelland (2001), relies on a series of hypothesis tests about components of the mediation model and is not based on an estimate of or formal inference about the indirect effect. In this article we recast Judd et al.'s approach in the path-analytic framework that is now commonly used in between-participant mediation analysis. By so doing, it is apparent how to estimate the indirect effect of a within-participant manipulation on some outcome through a mediator as the product of paths of influence. This path-analytic approach eliminates the need for discrete hypothesis tests about components of the model to support a claim of mediation, as Judd et al.'s method requires, because it relies only on an inference about the product of paths-the indirect effect. We generalize methods of inference for the indirect effect widely used in between-participant designs to this within-participant version of mediation analysis, including bootstrap confidence intervals and Monte Carlo confidence intervals. Using this path-analytic approach, we extend the method to models with multiple mediators operating in parallel and serially and discuss the comparison of indirect effects in these more complex models. We offer macros and code for SPSS, SAS, and Mplus that conduct these analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record
We examine morality’s relationship to three distinct dimensions of social perception: liking, respecting, and knowing a person. Participants completed two independent tasks. First, they rated acquaintances’ morality, competence, and sociability, and how much they liked, respected, and knew those acquaintances. In the second task, they rated a variety of moral and competence traits on their importance to liking, respecting, and knowing a person. Several findings emerged. First, morality was the most important factor to liking, respecting, and knowing a person but relatively more important to liking and respecting than to knowing; this finding replicated across tasks. Second, certain moral traits were more important than others, especially honesty, compassion, and fairness. Third, these traits were considered important because they were seen as potentially beneficial to the social perceiver. This research reveals morality’s centrality to evaluating and understanding others.
In recent years, Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has revolutionized social science by providing a way to collect behavioral data with unprecedented speed and efficiency. However, MTurk was not intended to be a research tool, and many common research tasks are difficult and time-consuming to implement as a result. TurkPrime was designed as a research platform that integrates with MTurk and supports tasks that are common to the social and behavioral sciences. Like MTurk, TurkPrime is an Internet-based platform that runs on any browser and does not require any downloads or installation. Tasks that can be implemented with TurkPrime include: excluding participants on the basis of previous participation, longitudinal studies, making changes to a study while it is running, automating the approval process, increasing the speed of data collection, sending bulk e-mails and bonuses, enhancing communication with participants, monitoring dropout and engagement rates, providing enhanced sampling options, and many others. This article describes how TurkPrime saves time and resources, improves data quality, and allows researchers to design and implement studies that were previously very difficult or impossible to carry out on MTurk. TurkPrime is designed as a research tool whose aim is to improve the quality of the crowdsourcing data collection process. Various features have been and continue to be implemented on the basis of feedback from the research community. TurkPrime is a free research platform.
Moral judgments play a critical role in motivating and enforcing human cooperation, and research on the proximate mechanisms of moral judgments highlights the importance of intuitive, automatic processes in forming such judgments. Intuitive moral judgments often share characteristics with deontological theories in normative ethics, which argue that certain acts (such as killing) are absolutely wrong, regardless of their consequences. Why do moral intuitions typically follow deontological prescriptions, as opposed to those of other ethical theories? Here, we test a functional explanation for this phenomenon by investigating whether agents who express deontological moral judgments are more valued as social partners. Across 5 studies, we show that people who make characteristically deontological judgments are preferred as social partners, perceived as more moral and trustworthy, and are trusted more in economic games. These findings provide empirical support for a partner choice account of moral intuitions whereby typically deontological judgments confer an adaptive function by increasing a person's likelihood of being chosen as a cooperation partner. Therefore, deontological moral intuitions may represent an evolutionarily prescribed prior that was selected for through partner choice mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record
Actual supermarket purchases made by consumers over a seven-month period are compared with the choice decisions collected in one sitting in a laboratory simulation. The laboratory simulation was designed to mimic the original market environment. Although there were systematic biases in predictions, of true purchase behavior from the simulated data, the "compressed simulations" were reasonably valid in predicting market shares and promotion sensitivity for brands across consumers. Coauthors are Bari A. Harlam, Barbara E. Kahn, and Leonard M. Lodish. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.
Three studies test the proposition that people appreciate others’ traits relative to the kind of relationship they have. Hypotheses are derived from the dual-perspective model, according to which the fundamental content dimensions of traits, agency, and communion are linked differently to the perspectives of actor versus observer; and that the kind of relationship between both persons is a moderator of the perspective-trait link. Study 1 shows that people generally prefer communal traits in others, and that agency traits are chosen less frequently in independence relationships than in unilateral dependence relationships than in mutual dependence relationships. Study 2 replicates the communion finding and reveals that—independent of respondents’ own agency and communion—agency traits are chosen less frequently in communal relationships than in exchange relationships. Study 3 shows that in both kinds of relationship well-being goals enhance the selection of communion traits, whereas mastery goals enhance the selection of agency traits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
This article reviews the research relevant to negativity and extremity biases in impression formation and discusses that research as it relates to the major theories that explain these biases. We also describe a model for these biases that draws on principles of natural object categorization. This model explains negativity and extremity biases in terms of the perceived diagnosticity of different kinds of cues for alternative categorizations of the stimulus. The model not only accounts for existing evidence regarding negativity and extremity biases but also suggests circumstances (a) in which positivity biases should occur and (b) in which single cues might be sufficient to prompt categorizations resistant to counterevidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We surveyed well-acquainted dyads about two key moral character traits (Honesty–Humility, Guilt Proneness), as well as several other individual differences. We examined self-other agreement, similarity, assumed similarity, and similarity-free agreement (i.e., self-other agreement controlling for similarity and assumed similarity). Participants projected their own level of moral character onto their peers (i.e., moderately high assumed similarity), but were nonetheless able to judge moral character with reasonable accuracy (moderately high self-other agreement and similarity-free agreement), suggesting that moral character traits can be detected by well-acquainted others. Regardless of reporting method, Honesty–Humility and Guilt Proneness were correlated with delinquency, unethical decision making, and counterproductive work behavior, suggesting that unethical behavior is committed disproportionately by people with low levels of these character traits.
What sorts of trait information do people most care about when forming impressions of others? Recent research in social cognition suggests that "warmth," broadly construed, should be of prime importance in impression formation. Yet, some prior research suggests that information about others' specifically moral traits-their moral "character"-may be a primary dimension. Although warmth and character have sometimes been conceived of as interchangeable, we argue that they are separable, and that across a wide variety of contexts, character is usually more important than warmth in impression formation. We first showed that moral character and social warmth traits are indeed separable (Studies 1 and 2). Further studies that used correlational and experimental methods showed that, as predicted, in most contexts, moral character information is more important in impression formation than is warmth information (Studies 2-6). Character information was also more important than warmth information with respect to judgments of traits' perceived fundamentalness to identity, their uniquely human quality, their context-independence, and their controllability (Study 2). Finally, Study 7 used an archival method to show that moral character information appears more prominently than warmth information in obituaries, and more strongly determines the impressions people form of the individuals described in those obituaries. We discuss implications for current theories of person perception and social cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
The public's trust in legal authorities has declined precipitously in recent years, along with a slip in the perceived legitimacy of these authorities. Prosecutors are no exception. Amidst growing debate about their contributions to social ills like mass incarceration, prosecutors have faced mounting pressure for greater accountability in their decision-making. Studies on the police and courts provide insight into a possible solution. This body of work has long shown that a critical framework through which the public views legal authorities is the perceived fairness of their decision-making processes, including the provision of explanations these authorities provide for their legal decisions. Thus, accountability, legitimacy, and trust in the eyes of the public rests, in part, on evaluating the fairness of decision-making processes, which itself requires the ability to distinguish between legal authorities' use of what the law and the public consider appropriate and inappropriate criteria when making legal decisions. Such evaluations can only occur when the factors that shape these decisions are known. Therefore, transparency in legal authorities' decision-making is core to the project of maintaining and building legitimacy and trust. However, as scholars have observed, prosecutorial decision-making largely occurs within a black box, rendering prosecutors' lack of transparency an obstacle to accountability, and in turn, legitimacy, and trust.
In this Essay, we argue that an empirical methodology called "process-tracing" can peer inside the black box of prosecutorial decision-making to help identify the factors that shape prosecutors' legal decisions, thus increasing transparency in their decision-making overall. As such, this methodology is helpful in several ways. First, it allows prosecutors to compare what factors actually drive their charging decisions to a normative legal framework so that they can adjust their behavior to better adhere to such standards. Second, it enables prosecutors to compare those factors with what the public considers to be important regarding prosecution. And third, it supplies prosecutors with a data-driven way to explain the reasoning behind their decisions to the public. Thus, prosecutors can highlight where their decision-making aligns with the public's views of prosecution to reinforce accountability, legitimacy, and trust. Where alignment with the public is weak, prosecutors can identify the legal factors influencing their decisions to promote accountability, legitimacy, and trust. Looking to the future of prosecution, a process-tracing approach provides a basis for a more nuanced, data-driven way to address prosecutorial reform—that is, reform grounded in the idea of building authentic trust between the public and legal authorities like prosecutors.
Objective
The psychological profile of the moral person might depend on whose perspective is being used. Here, we decompose moral impressions into three components: (a) Shared Moral Character (shared variance across self‐ and informant reports), (b) Moral Identity (how a person uniquely views their morality), and (c) Moral Reputation (how others uniquely view that person's morality).
Method
In two samples (total N = 458), we used an extended version of the Trait‐Reputation‐Identity model to examine the extent to which each perspective accounts for the overall variance in moral impressions and the degree to which social and personal outcomes were associated with each perspective, controlling for method variance (i.e., positivity and acquiescence bias).
Results
Results suggest that moral character impressions are strongly influenced by positivity and largely idiosyncratic. All components were related to higher levels of agreeableness. For the most part, however, the three components had unique correlates: people higher in Shared Moral Character tended to have higher standings on conscientiousness and honesty‐humility, were more respected, and donated more during an in‐lab game; people higher in Moral Identity endorsed various moral foundations to a greater extent; and people higher in Moral Reputation valued the loyalty foundation less.
Conclusion
These results demonstrate the value of considering multiple perspectives when measuring moral character.
Over the past few decades, two-factor models of social cognition have emerged as a dominant framework for understanding impression development. These models suggest that two dimensions—warmth and competence—are key in shaping our cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions toward social targets. More recently, research has jettisoned the warmth dimension, distinguishing instead between sociability (e.g., friendliness and likeability) and morality (e.g., honesty and trustworthiness) and showing that morality is far more important than sociability (and competence) in predicting the evaluations we make of individuals and groups. Presenting research from our laboratories, we show that moral categories are central at all stages of impression development from implicit assumptions, to information gathering and to final evaluations. Moreover, moral trait information has a dominant role in predicting people's behavioral reactions toward social targets. We also show that morality dominates impression development, because it is closely linked to the essential judgment of whether another party's intentions are beneficial or harmful. Thus, our research informs a new framework for understanding person and group perception: The moral primacy model (MPM) of impression development. We conclude by discussing how the MPM relates to classic and emerging models of social cognition and by outlining a trajectory for future research.
How do people judge whether someone deserves moral praise for their actions? In contrast to the large literature on moral blame, work on how people attribute praise has, until recently, been scarce. However, there is a growing body of recent work from a variety of subfields in psychology (including social, cognitive, developmental, and consumer) suggesting that moral praise is a fundamentally unique form of moral attribution and not simply the positive moral analogue of blame attributions. A functional perspective helps explain asymmetries in blame and praise: we propose that while blame is primarily for punishment and signaling one’s moral character, praise is primarily for relationship building.
People evaluate the moral character of others not only based on what they do, but also on what leads them to do it. Because an agent's state of mind is not directly observable, people typically engage in mindreading—attempts at inferring mental states—when forming moral evaluations. The present paper identifies a general target of such mental state inference, mental occurrents—a catchall term for the thoughts, beliefs, principles, feelings, concerns, and rules accessible in an agent's mind when confronting a morally relevant decision. Moral mental occurrents are those that can provide a moral justification for a particular course of action. Whereas previous mindreading research has examined how people reason back to make sense of an agent's behavior, we instead ask how inferred moral mental occurrents (MOs) constrain moral evaluations for an agent's subsequent actions. Our studies distinguish three accounts of how inferred MOs influence moral evaluations, show that people rely on inferred MOs spontaneously (instead of merely when experimental measures draw attention to them), and identify non-moral contextual cues (e.g., whether the situation demands a quick decision) that guide inferences about MOs. Implications for theory of mind, moral psychology, and social cognition are discussed.
Most people want to change some aspects of their personality, but does this phenomenon extend to moral character and to close others? Targets ( n = 800) rated their personality traits and reported how much they wanted to change on each trait; well-acquainted informants ( n = 958) rated targets’ personality traits and how much they wanted the targets to change on those same traits. Targets and informants reported a lower desire to change on more morally relevant traits (e.g., honesty, compassion, fairness) compared with less morally relevant traits (e.g., anxiety, sociability, productiveness)—even after we controlled for current trait levels. Moreover, although targets generally wanted to improve more on traits that they had less desirable levels of, and informants wanted their targets to improve more on those traits as well, targets’ moral change goals were less calibrated to their current trait levels. Finally, informants wanted targets to change in similar ways, but to a lesser extent, than targets themselves did. These findings suggest that moral considerations take a back seat when it comes to self-improvement.
Eye tracking has been used for decades to provide insight into the cognitive processes that underlie consumers' decision-making. Since there is a wide variety of tools, ranging from information display boards to functional magnetic resonance imaging, that can be used to better understand these processes, eye tracking should not be viewed in isolation. In order to understand the roots, current developments, and future research avenues of eye-tracking research, it is necessary to focus on process-tracing research on consumer decision-making. This paper addresses this issue by quantitatively analyzing 347 articles, along with their 17,798 cited references, by means of factor and social network analysis. Six distinct, but to varying extents interconnected, key research streams dominate the field's research agenda. Revealing the emergence and growth of these research streams shows how their prevalence has changed over time. Several conclusions, based on the results, are drawn and used to indicate possible future research.
Research suggests that morality, sociability, and competence exert different effects on impression formation and that morality forms the primary basis for the global evaluation of others. However, prior work has almost exclusively focused on "first" impressions, overlooking that social interactions require flexible updating of initial evaluations. Three experiments tested whether impression updating is influenced by morality, sociability, and competence characteristics to the same extent. Participants were asked to revise their impressions of an individual in light of new and inconsistent information pertaining to his morality, sociability or competence. Results showed that morality was perceived as more informative of interpersonal intentions; therefore a greater impression change occurred when moral information (vs. sociability or competence information) was added to what was previously learned about an individual. Our findings reveal that the key role of morality in social cognition goes beyond the formation of initial evaluations by influencing the updating of such first impressions.
Written from the perspective of a philosopher, this paper raises a number of potential concerns with how the VIA classifies and the VIA-IS measures character traits. With respect to the 24 character strengths, concerns are raised about missing strengths, the lack of vices, conflicting character strengths, the unclear connection between character strengths and virtues, and the misclassification of some character strengths under certain virtues. With respect to the 6 virtues, concerns are raised about conflicting virtues, the absence of practical wisdom, and factor analyses that do not find a 6 factor structure. With respect to the VIA-IS, concerns are raised about its neglect of motivation and about the underlying assumptions it makes about character traits. The paper ends by sketching a significantly improved classification which omits the 6 virtues and introduces additional strengths, vices, and a conflict resolution trait. © 2018
What does it mean to act virtuously? We examine lay perceptions of virtue, and show that different psychological drivers of virtuous behavior are relevant for different types of actions. When evaluating non-moral virtuous behavior, such as choosing to skip dessert, attributions of virtue depend on perceived willpower (i.e., the extent to which someone overcomes temptation in service of acting virtuous). In contrast, when evaluating moral virtuous behavior, such as choosing to be faithful to a spouse, attributions of virtue depend on perceived purity (i.e., the extent to which someone lacks temptation to sin and thereby does not need to exert willpower in service of acting virtuously). Study 1 demonstrates that when people describe their own actions, they associate willpower with non-moral virtuous behavior, and purity with moral virtuous behavior. Studies 2 & 3 examine judgments of others and show that as behaviors become moralized, people elevate the importance of purity relative to willpower when ascribing virtue. Finally, Study 4 examines perceptions of those who are “reformed”—having eliminated their previous sinful desires such that they no longer feel tempted. For non-moral behaviors, reformed individuals are seen as strong-willed and thus highly virtuous. However, for moral behaviors, reformed individuals are still seen as somewhat impure, and are judged to be less virtuous than those have never felt tempted by a particular vice. These results underscore how construing behaviors in moral terms shifts what people consider to be virtuous.
Significance
It is commonly argued that humans have a dominant preference for morality traits vs. immorality traits in others—that is, irrespective of the surrounding context, morality fosters liking, and immorality fosters disliking. The results of four experiments oppose this view by showing that situational goals can eliminate and even reverse the preference for morality vs. immorality in others. These findings suggest that our preference for morality vs. immorality is conditional on the demands of our current goals and cannot be attributed solely to innate, “hardwired” links or personal learning experiences. They also suggest that immoral people sometimes win public adoration, and the power that comes with it, not in spite of but precisely because of their immorality.
Morality indicates what is the 'right' and what is the 'wrong' way to behave. It is one of the most popular areas of research in contemporary social psychology, driven in part by recent political-economic crises and the behavioral patterns they exposed. In the past, work on morality tended to highlight individual concerns and moral principles, but more recently researchers have started to address the group context of moral behavior. In Morality and the Regulation of Social Behavior: Groups as Moral Anchors, Naomi Ellemersbuilds on her extensive research experience to draw together a wide range of insights and findings on morality. She offers an essential integrative summary of the social functions of moral phenomena, examines how social groups contribute to moral values, and explains how groups act as 'moral anchors'. Her analysis suggests that intragroup dynamics and the desire to establish a distinct group identity are highly relevant to understanding the implications of morality for the regulation of individual behavior. Yet, this group-level context has not been systematically taken into account in research on morality, nor is it used as a matter of course to inform attempts to influence moral behavior. Building on social identity and self-categorization principles, this unique book explicitly considers social groups as an important source of moral values, and examines how this impacts on individual decision making as well as collective behaviors and relations between groups in society. Throughout the book, Ellemers presents results from her own research to elucidate how social behavior is affected by moral concerns. In doing this, she highlights how such insights advance our understanding of moral behavior and moral judgments for of people who live together in communities and work together in organizations. Morality and the Regulation of Social Behavior is essential reading for academics and students in social psychology and related disciplines, and is an invaluable resource for practitioners interested in understanding moral behavior.
Impressions of moral character are among the most relevant and consequential; yet, people do not always see eye to eye with others about their moral character. Is self-other disagreement about moral character associated with interpersonal costs, and are these costs uniquely associated with moral impressions? To answer these questions, judges (N ¼ 100) in a community sample rated several acquaintances' (targets) moral character (e.g., compassion, honesty) and personality and indicated their liking and respect of the target (N ¼ 587 judge–target pairs) while targets described their own moral character and personality. For most moral impressions, as the discrepancy between judges and targets increased, judges tended to like and respect targets less, particularly when targets enhanced their character relative to their judge. These effects were unique from personality ratings (e.g., agreeableness). Thus, failing to see eye to eye with others about one's moral character is associated with negative interpersonal outcomes.
Morality, sociability, and competence are distinct dimensions in person perception. We argue that a person’s morality informs us about their likely intentions, whereas their competence and sociability inform us about the likelihood that they will fulfill those intentions. Accordingly, we hypothesized that whereas morality would be considered unconditionally positive, sociability and competence would be highly positive only in moral others, and would be less positive in immoral others. Using exploratory factor analyses, Studies 1a and 1b distinguished evaluations of morality and sociability. Studies 2 to 5 then showed that sociability and competence are evaluated positively contingent on morality—Study 2 demonstrated this phenomenon, while the remaining studies explained it (Study 3), generalized it (Studies 3-5), and ruled out an alternative explanation for it (Study 5). Study 6 showed that the positivity of morality traits is independent of other morality traits. These results support a functionalist account of these dimensions of person perception.
People perceive that if their memories and moral beliefs changed, they would change. We investigated why individuals respond this way. In Study 1, participants judged that identity would change more after changes to memories and widely shared moral beliefs (e.g., about murder) versus preferences and controversial moral beliefs (e.g., about abortion). The extent to which participants judged that changes would affect their relationships predicted identity change (Study 2) and mediated the relationship between type of moral belief and perceived identity change (Study 3). We discuss the role that social relationships play in judgments of identity and highlight implications for psychology and philosophy.
Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have long asserted that deception harms trust. We challenge this claim. Across four studies, we demonstrate that deception can increase trust. Specifically, prosocial lies increase the willingness to pass money in the trust game, a behavioral measure of benevolence-based trust. In Studies 1a and 1b, we find that altruistic lies increase trust when deception is directly experienced and when it is merely observed. In Study 2, we demonstrate that mutually beneficial lies also increase trust. In Study 3, we disentangle the effects of intentions and deception; intentions are far more important than deception for building benevolence-based trust. In Study 4, we examine how prosocial lies influence integrity-based trust. We introduce a new economic game, the Rely-or-Verify game, to measure integrity-based trust. Prosocial lies increase benevolence-based trust, but harm integrity-based trust. Our findings expand our understanding of deception and deepen our insight into the mechanics of trust.
Agency and communion are the core dimensions of social judgment as they indicate whether someone's intentions toward us are beneficial or harmful (i.e., communion), and whether they have the ability to fulfil their intentions (i.e., agency). Recent advances have demonstrated that communion encompasses both sociability (e.g., friendliness, likeability) and morality (e.g., honesty, trustworthiness) characteristics. In this article, we review the emerging literature highlighting that morality and sociability make unique contribution to social judgment and that morality has a primary role in the evaluations we make of individuals and groups. We also consider the evidence showing that morality and sociability play distinct roles in the positive evaluation of the individual and group self-concept. We conclude that future research on social judgment should expand the two-dimensional model to the more specific aspects of communion captured in information about morality and sociability.
To study people's processing of hurricane forecast advisories, we conducted a computer-based experiment that examined 11 research questions about the information seeking patterns of students assuming the role of a county emergency manager in a sequence of six hurricane forecast advisories for each of four different hurricanes. The results show that participants considered a variety of different sources of information-textual, graphic, and numeric-when tracking hurricanes. Click counts and click durations generally gave the same results but there were some significant differences. Moreover, participants' information search strategies became more efficient over forecast advisories and with increased experience tracking the four hurricanes. These changes in the search patterns from the first to the fourth hurricane suggest that the presentation of abstract principles in a training manual was not sufficient for them to learn how to track hurricanes efficiently but they were able to significantly improve their search efficiency with a modest amount (roughly an hour) of practice. Overall, these data indicate that information search patterns are complex and deserve greater attention in studies of dynamic decision tasks.
© 2015 Society for Risk Analysis.
Both normative theories of ethics in philosophy and contemporary models of moral judgment in psychology have focused almost exclusively on the permissibility of acts, in particular whether acts should be judged on the basis of their material outcomes (consequentialist ethics) or on the basis of rules, duties, and obligations (deontological ethics). However, a longstanding third perspective on morality, virtue ethics, may offer a richer descriptive account of a wide range of lay moral judgments. Building on this ethical tradition, we offer a person-centered account of moral judgment, which focuses on individuals as the unit of analysis for moral evaluations rather than on acts. Because social perceivers are fundamentally motivated to acquire information about the moral character of others, features of an act that seem most informative of character often hold more weight than either the consequences of the act or whether a moral rule has been broken. This approach, we argue, can account for numerous empirical findings that are either not predicted by current theories of moral psychology or are simply categorized as biases or irrational quirks in the way individuals make moral judgments.
© The Author(s) 2014.
Four studies show that people distinguish between two sorts of moral virtues: core goodness traits that unconditionally enhance the morality of any agent, and value commitment traits that are conditionally good (i.e., that polarize the morality of good and bad agents). Study 1 revealed that commitment traits (e.g., dedicated) amplify the badness of a bad agent (terrorist), whereas core goodness traits (e.g., kind) amplify the goodness of the bad agent. Study 2 replicated these results while also showing that both commitment and core goodness traits enhance the perceived goodness of neutral and good agents. Studies 2-4 established that commitment traits polarize moral evaluations by signaling agents' commitment to certain values, rather than their agency or effectiveness in achieving those values. These results extend current understanding of the perceived structure of moral character.
People make inferences about the actions of others, assessing whether an act is best explained by person-based versus situation-based accounts. Here we examine people's explanations for norm violations in different domains: harmful acts (e.g., assault) and impure acts (e.g., incest). Across four studies, we find evidence for an attribution asymmetry: people endorse more person-based attributions for impure versus harmful acts. This attribution asymmetry is partly explained by the abnormality of impure versus harmful acts, but not by differences in the moral wrongness or the statistical frequency of these acts. Finally, this asymmetry persists even when the situational factors that lead an agent to act impurely are stipulated. These results suggest that, relative to harmful acts, impure acts are linked to person-based attributions.
Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This study tested for inter-judge agreement on moral character. A sample of students and community members rated their own moral character using a measure that tapped six moral character traits. Friends, family members, and/or acquaintances rated these targets on the same traits. Self/other and inter-informant agreement was found at the trait level for both a general character factor and for residual variance explained by individual moral character traits, as well as at the individual level (judges agreed on targets' "moral character profiles"). Observed inter-judge agreement constitutes evidence for the existence of moral character, and raises questions about the nature of moral character traits.
In the early parts of the 20th century, character made up a major part of psychology, specifically of personality psychology. However, an influential observational study of children's moral behavior, conducted by Hartshorne, May, and colleagues in the 1920s, suggested that consistency in morality-related behavior was lower than many people expected. Some psychologists interpreted such results to mean that there was no consistency in moral behavior and thus that there were no stable, meaningful individual differences in moral behavior – character did not exist. Recent years have witnessed a reinvigoration of character, ethics, and morality as objects of psychological study. Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to this reinvigoration by reviewing the use of the concept of “character” within psychology, considering whether the evidence supports the notion of moral character as a psychological construct, and suggesting new prospects for research on moral character.
We demonstrate that some lies are perceived to be more ethical than honest statements. Across three studies, we find that individuals who tell prosocial lies, lies told with the intention of benefitting others, are perceived to be more moral than individuals who tell the truth. In Study 1, we compare altruistic lies to selfish truths. In Study 2, we introduce a stochastic deception game to disentangle the influence of deception, outcomes, and intentions on perceptions of moral character. In Study 3, we demonstrate that moral judgments of lies are sensitive to the consequences of lying for the deceived party, but insensitive to the consequences of lying for the liar. Both honesty and benevolence are essential components of moral character. We find that when these values conflict, benevolence may be more important than honesty. More broadly, our findings suggest that the moral foundation of care may be more important than the moral foundation of justice.
It has often been suggested that the mind is central to personal identity. But do all parts of the mind contribute equally? Across five experiments, we demonstrate that moral traits—more than any other mental faculty—are considered the most essential part of identity, the self, and the soul. Memory, especially emotional and autobiographical memory, is also fairly important. Lower-level cognition and perception have the most tenuous connection to identity, rivaling that of purely physical traits. These findings suggest that folk notions of personal identity are largely informed by the mental faculties affecting social relationships, with a particularly keen focus on moral traits.