New research published in Journal of Personality & Social Psychology shows that people’s anticipated emotional responses to situations significantly shape their moral praise and character judgments of others.
Prior research shows that moral praise is distinct from blame and is often linked to the observer’s perception of the actor’s moral character. While earlier studies demonstrated that emotional responses influence how positively we view charitable actions, many relied on participants being explicitly informed about the helper’s emotional state. In this work, Paige Amormino and colleagues sought to understand how people infer a helper’s emotions and how this affects their moral evaluations.
In daily life, acts of kindness are commonly interpreted through an emotional lens, with observers often assuming that helping behaviors stem from empathy and concern. This assumption drives judgments about the moral worth of the act and the person who performed it. The researchers hypothesized that when people anticipate how they would feel in a given situation, they use that information to assess the moral character of others involved in similar scenarios.
In Study 1, the researchers examined whether helpers in emotionally arousing situations received more praise and were judged to have better moral character than those in less emotional scenarios. The study involved 284 participants, recruited through Prolific, who were randomly assigned to evaluate 10 out of 20 helping scenarios.
The scenarios varied in emotional intensity, such as helping an elderly woman cross the street or finding lost kittens. Participants were asked to rate their anticipated emotional responses, specifically distress and empathic concern, and then evaluate the moral character and praiseworthiness of the helper. To account for confounding factors, the researchers also measured participants’ perceptions of the helping act’s benefits.
The results confirmed that helpers in more affectively arousing situations received significantly higher praise and were viewed as having more positive moral character. Anticipated distress and empathic concern were strong predictors of these moral evaluations, even when accounting for the perceived benefits of the helping act. The findings suggested that people attribute more moral credit to helpers in situations that evoke stronger emotional reactions, and this relationship held even after accounting for how beneficial the helping behavior was perceived to be.
Study 2 expanded on Study 1 by exploring whether the link between anticipated affect and moral evaluations was mediated by perceptions of the helper’s moral motivation. A larger sample of 2,863 participants was recruited, and each participant evaluated one of the 20 scenarios used in Study 1. In addition to rating their anticipated distress and empathic concern, participants were asked to judge the moral motivations of the helper, such as whether the action was driven by genuine moral concern or self-interest. They also provided ratings of the helper’s praiseworthiness and overall moral character.
Helpers in more emotionally arousing situations were seen as more morally motivated, which in turn led to greater praise and higher moral character evaluations, suggesting that people infer moral motivations based on the emotional intensity of the situation. Specifically, scenarios that evoked more distress and empathic concern led participants to believe that the helper was acting out of genuine moral concern, which then resulted in more positive judgments of the helper’s character and praiseworthiness.
Study 3 moved from a between-participants to a within-participants design, allowing the same participants to assess multiple aspects of each helping scenario. A total of 959 participants were recruited to evaluate one of the 20 helping scenarios from Study 1. This time, participants first rated how much distress and empathic concern they themselves would feel if they were the helper.
They then evaluated the helper’s own emotional state, moral motives, and the praiseworthiness and moral character of the helper. Additionally, the study tested the entire proposed causal chain, including participants’ perceptions of the helper’s emotions.
The results replicated the findings from Studies 1 and 2. Participants’ own anticipated distress and empathic concern predicted their judgments of the helper’s emotional state, which in turn influenced their assessments of the helper’s moral motivation. Helpers who were perceived as more emotionally affected by the situation were viewed as more morally motivated, leading to greater praise and higher moral character ratings. Importantly, this study showed that the pathway from participants’ own emotions to their moral evaluations was mediated by their perceptions of the helper’s emotionality.
Study 4 tested whether disrupting the link between participants’ anticipated emotions and their perceptions of the helper’s emotional state would weaken the effect of anticipated affect on moral judgments. A total of 958 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the control condition, participants read one of the 20 helping scenarios from the previous studies and rated their own anticipated affect, the helper’s emotional state, and the helper’s praiseworthiness and character.
In the experimental condition, participants were told that the helper had a brain condition that made them unemotional and reliant solely on rational calculation. The goal was to see if removing the emotional component from the helper’s behavior would affect participants’ moral evaluations.
In the unemotional condition, participants were less likely to use their own anticipated emotions to infer the helper’s emotional state, which reduced the effect of anticipated distress and empathic concern on moral judgments. Participants in the unemotional condition rated the helpers as less morally motivated, giving them lower praise and moral character ratings compared to those in the control group. This finding underscored the role of anticipated emotional reactions in shaping how people infer the emotions and motivations of others and how they evaluate moral actions.
Overall, this research highlights the significant role of emotions in shaping moral judgments.
One limitation was the variability in participants’ ratings of their own anticipated emotions, particularly empathic concern, which reduced statistical power in some analyses.
The research, “Anticipated Affect Predicts Moral Praise and Character Judgments”, was authored by Paige Amormino, Brett Mercier, and Yoel Inbar.
