Anticipated emotions shape moral praise and character judgments of helpers
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, …