Elevation Puts Moral Values Into Action

Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(3) 373-378 Elevation Puts Moral Values Into Action ª The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1948550611423595 http://spps.sagepub.com Simone Schnall1 and Jean Roper2 Abstract Moral elevation has been shown to increase helping behavior. However, this might be due to a threatened moral self-image because people engage in a social comparison with a moral exemplar and conclude that their own moral integrity is inferior. Alternatively, feelings of elevation might provide a motivational impetus to act on one’s moral values. We provided participants with an opportunity to engage in self-affirmation, which was followed by an induction of moral elevation or a neutral control mood. Compared to the neutral mood, participants experiencing moral elevation showed higher levels of helping behavior following self-affirmation. This effect was especially pronounced in participants experiencing moral elevation who reminded themselves of previous prosocial behavior; they showed more helping than participants experiencing moral elevation who had not engaged in self-affirmation. Thus, rather than posing a threat to moral self-worth, feelings of elevation can provide the motivational trigger to act on affirmed moral values. Keywords elevation, morality, prosocial behavior, moral licensing, self-affirmation It is a rare person who does not think of himself or herself as themselves indicated they would donate less to a charity and morally upstanding and full of integrity. Even mass murderers, cooperate less in an environmental task than participants who pedophiles, and other criminals seem to be able to convince wrote a story involving neutral words. Presumably, thinking themselves that they have positive moral qualities. Recent about their positive qualities affirmed participants’ moral research has explored how people regulate their moral self- integrity, and as a consequence, reduced any desire to engage worth over time in the face of obvious moral transgressions in prosocial behavior. These findings suggest that making (Zhong, Liljenquist, & Cain, 2009). Converging evidence sug- salient positive or negative traits can be enough to result in gests that on some implicit level people appear to keep track of moral licensing effects; actually engaging in a moral action is their own moral behavior, as if they accumulate ‘‘moral cred- not necessary. Although Sachdeva and colleagues (2009) did not its’’ when doing something good, credits which they later explicitly interpret their findings in this way, their work can be ‘‘cash in’’ when doing something immoral. Thus, when people viewed as applying the general principle of self-affirmation are reasonably sure of their moral integrity, they have little when facing threat (McQueen & Klein, 2006; Steele, 1988) to motivation to do further good, a phenomenon termed ‘‘moral the moral domain. Indeed, a central consideration of self- licensing’’ (Mazar & Zhong, 2010; Merritt, Effron, & Monin, affirmation theory is that people want to protect the integrity 2010; Monin & Miller, 2001; Sachdeva, Iliev, & Medin, of their concept of self (Sherman & Cohen, 2006). 2009; Zhong et al., 2009). In the first clear demonstration of Such findings regarding moral licensing paint a rather pes- this effect, Monin and Miller (2001) gave some participants simistic picture of human nature: On many occasions people an opportunity to affirm their credentials as nonprejudiced peo- may only act morally because it allows them to restore their ple, for example, by disagreeing with sexist statements. In sub- own self-worth after it had been challenged. In other words, sequent tasks, those participants exhibited more prejudicial prosocial behaviors such as altruism might often be merely opinions than participants who did not have the earlier oppor- selfish, because once one feels like a morally superior person, tunity of showing themselves to be unbiased. Similar effects have been demonstrated involving political attitudes, such that participants who in one task indicated a voting preference for 1 Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Barak Obama indicated a positive prejudice toward Whites in Cambridge, Cambridge, UK a subsequent task (Effron, Cameron, & Monin, 2009). 2 School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK Further research has shown that moral licensing effects Corresponding Author: occur when people merely think of concepts relating to a Simone Schnall, Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, positive self-image (Sachdeva et al., 2009). Participants who University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RQ, UK copied positive trait words and used them in a story about Email: [email protected] Downloaded from spp.sagepub.com at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on November 7, 2012 374 Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(3) there is no need to prove this fact any further. Sachdeva and caring. They found that when writing an essay about their most colleagues (2009) end their article with the question ‘‘How treasured value, participants reported higher levels of love and does one avert the danger of moral licensing?’’ (p. 528) We empathy than when writing about a low-importance value. propose a possible answer, one that involves eliciting elevation, Because of its inherent motivational component to inspire peo- a positive moral emotion. ple to do good, as an other-directed, in fact, ‘‘other-praising’’ Elevation describes the subjective experience when obser- emotion (Algoe & Haidt, 2009), elevation might provide a ving others perform acts of moral excellence such as kindness special opportunity to turn one’s core values into action. or heroism, namely behaviors that benefit others while incur- ring a cost to the person performing them (Haidt, 2003). When The Current Research experiencing elevation, people describe feeling inspired and uplifted, and, importantly, having the motivation to become a This experiment tested the potential consequences of experien- better person (Haidt, 2003). People specifically report an urge cing elevation following a reminder of positive aspects of one’s of wanting to do good (Algoe & Haidt, 2009; Landis et al., self-concept. Participants engaged in self-affirmation or a neu- 2009), and direct evidence for the link between elevation and tral control task and then were induced to experience either helping behavior was provided by Schnall, Roper, and Fessler moral elevation or a neutral mood. Subsequently an opportu- (2010). Participants watched an elevating clip from the ‘‘Oprah nity to engage in helping behavior was presented that was Winfrey Show’’ in which a music teacher mentored a young ostensibly unconnected to the experiment itself. Two outcomes man from an impoverished background and played a major part were considered possible: Following the logic of moral licen- in turning him away from a potential life of crime. Compared to sing (Sachdeva et al., 2009), participants experiencing moral participants who watched a neutral control clip or one eliciting elevation should only engage in increased helping behavior if general positive affect, participants who watched the elevation they did not previously affirm their own positive qualities but clip demonstrated a higher level of prosocial behavior, as indi- not when they did. Alternatively, following the logic of self- cated by their willingness to volunteer for further unpaid stud- affirmation as a reminder of core values (Crocker, Niiya, & ies or to help an experimenter by completing a boring task. Mischowski, 2008), relative to being in a neutral mood, when Similarly, Freeman, Aquino, and McFerran (2009) showed that experiencing elevation with its inspirational effect to become elevation, induced by watching clips and reading stories about a better person, participants should show increased helping extraordinary acts of forgiveness, increased donations to a behavior after having reminded themselves of their own posi- charity for the advancement of education of Black students tive qualities. If the second possibility was supported, the effect among White individuals high in social dominance orientation, should be especially pronounced for participants who during which is normally linked to racist attitudes. Further, people for the self-affirmation task considered their previous moral (i.e., whom moral identity is central to the self-concept report higher prosocial) behavior rather than other positive qualities of a feelings of moral elevation when faced with moral excellence more selfish nature. than people for whom moral identity is less important, and these feelings, in turn, predict the desire to engage in proscocial Method behavior (Aquino, McFerran, & Laven, 2011). All these findings suggest that moral elevation can have highly beneficial Participants consequences because it inspires people to do good things. Eighty female1 participants recruited from the University of However, in the light of the findings reviewed above con- Plymouth participated as part of a psychology course require- cerning moral licensing (Mazar & Zhong, 2010; Merritt ment or for payment of £6. Data from three participants were et al., 2010; Monin & Miller, 2001; Sachdeva et al., 2009; excluded because of suspicion about the study purpose and Zhong et al., 2009), it may be that the increased prosocial beha- from one additional participant because she failed to show up vior observed after experiencing elevation

Load more