Abstract: Moral impressions are some of the most consequential opinions people have about themselves and others. Morality is at the core of identity (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014), and drives many interpersonal interactions such as cooperation (Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005) and affiliation (Bukowski & Sippola, 1998). Yet, little is known about the extent to which these moral impressions are grounded in reality or if they are only held as idiosyncratic impressions. The current investigation evaluated how people see their own and other’s moral character, if these moral impressions are shared, and if a shared understanding of moral character is adaptive. First, I developed and tested a measurement model for assessing self- and other-impressions of morality which removes a global evaluative bias from moral impressions (Studies 1 and 2). Second, I evaluated if self- and other-impressions are grounded in a shared social reality (i.e. self-other agreement and inter-judge consensus) and/or grounded in observable behavior (Study 3). Third, I evaluated if sharing a social reality for moral impressions has interpersonal consequences for the self (Study 4). This work sheds light on the extent to which morality is in the eye of the beholder and the adaptiveness of holding shared moral impressions. Additionally, this work has implications for the assessment of moral character and the adaptiveness of self-knowledge.
1 Importance of moral impressions
1.1 Self-impressions
The beliefs we hold about our own moral character – moral self-impressions – are among the most important beliefs we hold about ourselves (Wojciszke, 2005). Indeed, people’s beliefs about their own morality lie at the heart of their identity (Heiphetz, Strohminger, & Young, 2017). For example, changing aspects of our moral selves is viewed as fundamentally changing a person, more so than non-moral aspects (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014). When people are asked about what traits comprise the ideal person, moral traits are the defining features of an ideal person (Cottrell, Neuberg, & Li, 2007). Even after death, loved ones emphasize the morality of the recently deceased (Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014). People value a moral self-image (Jordan & Mullen, 2011; Monin & Jordan, 2009) and have a strong desire to see themselves as moral (Mazar, Amir, & Ariely, 2008). Given how much people care about their own morality it stands to reason that holding moral self-perceptions may be a fundamental psychological need (Prentice, Jayawickreme, Hawkins, Hartley, Furr, & Fleeson, 2018). Taken together, this suggests that moral self-perceptions are an important part of people’s lives.
1.2 Other-impressions
It isn’t just our own morality that people care deeply about. People also care deeply about the morality of others (Pizarro, & Tannenbaum, 2012). This is evidenced by the amount of time and effort people put into seeking and sharing information about the moral character of others. People preferentially seek out morally relevant information more so than non-moral information when forming an impression of others (Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, 2011; Wojciszke, Bazinska, & Jaworski, 1998). Further, and they regularly share information about the moral character of people they know. For example, people regularly gossip about morality (Feinberg, Willer, Stellar, & Keltner, 2012; Peters & Kashima 2015). A conservative estimate is that on any given day there is about a 15% chance to learn about moral acts of others (Hofmann, Wisneski, Brandt, & Skitka, 2014). In essence, people exert effort into learning the morality of others.
Part of why people try to understand the other’s morality is because they believe it is useful information for guiding important interpersonal decisions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people use their impressions about other’s moral character to inform a wide variety of decisions. As such, moral impressions carry consequence. Moral character impressions affect who people like and trust (Goodwin et al., 2014). Friendships and relationships are sought and ended based on moral judgments (Van’t Wout & Sanfey, 2008). Decisions about whom to trust with valuable resources (e.g. money) are informed by moral character judgments (e.g. money; De Bruin & Van Lange, 1999; Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005). People avoid working with people who are uncooperative. For example, people prefer to work with other’s when they have seen them make large contributions to a public good (Rockenbach & Milinski, 2011). Leaders are elected based on constituent impressions of their morality. For example, voters prefer candidates that appear trustworthy (Chen, Jing, & Lee, 2014). All of this evidence suggests that being seen as a moral person has positive interpersonal consequences.
In essence, people care deeply about their own morality and exert lots of effort to understand the moral character of others. The well documented dominance of moral impressions in our social lives has driven scholars to regard morality as a fundamental dimension of person perception (Brambilla & Leach, 2014, Goodwin et al., 2014; Wojciszke, 2005). And yet, despite the importance of moral impressions in our lives and its fundamental role in person perception, current work has not adequately addressed several fundamental questions about moral character impressions. Are our moral impressions grounded in reality? Is holding realistic moral impressions adaptive? To address these fundamental questions, it is important to understand the process by which accurate moral impressions form and the challenges that stand in the way of forming accurate moral impressions.
4 In lab and daily behaviors
Despite evidence of convergence between self- and other-impressions of morality, there was little evidence that self-impressions were related to moral behaviors. Self-impressions were not associated with in-lab cooperation behavior nor with daily reports from participants about their own behavior. There was some evidence that other-impressions are related to moral behavior. Specifically, other-impressions were related to in-lab cooperation behaviors in the public goods game. However, there was no relationship between other-impressions and daily reports of moral behavior.
If my measures of behaviors are taken as a valid criterion of accuracy, then these results suggest that people are somewhat accurate about the morality of others. But that people are inaccurate about their own morality. This is mostly in line with SOKA model predictions that the evaluative nature of a moral impression prevents selves from holding accurate impressions and the somewhat internal nature of morality makes it difficult for other’s to form an accurate moral impression. And in general these results are in line with some recent work that suggest that impressions are not tethered to acoustical recordings of behaviors for either agreeableness (Beer & Vazire, 2017) or moral impressions (Bollich, 2016).
5 Is sharing reality adaptive?
Using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, I found that those participants that share a social reality did not experience the most social value. Instead, there was an optimal level of humility, such that those participants who somewhat underestimated their morality with respect to their peers were liked and respected the most. There seems to be a balancing act between the benefits of sharing a social reality and being somewhat humble with respect to peers. The result of this balance is that some, but not too much humility was associated with highest levels of social value.
Although the general pattern for moral impression suggested the optimal approach for participants was to be humble with respect to their peers, this was not the case for the domain of fairness. Instead, peer’s impression of fairness was positively related to social value, regardless of how people saw themselves. This suggests that there are no benefits of humility, nor costs to enhancement in the domain of fairness. Though some caution should be used when interpreting domain specific effects, as little systematic domain variance was detected in studies 1 & 2.
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