In this investigation of cultural differences in the experience of obligation, we distinguish between Confucian Role Ethics versus Relative Autonomy lay theories of motivation and illustrate them with data showing relevant cultural differences in both social judgments and intrapersonal experience. First, when judging others, Western European heritage culture (WEHC) participants (relative to Confucian heritage culture [CHC] participants) judged obligation-motivated actors more negatively than those motivated by agency (Study 1, N = 529). Second, in daily diary and situation sampling studies, CHC participants (relative to WEHC participants) perceived more congruency between their own agentic and obligated motivations, and more positive emotional associations with obligated motivations (Study 2, N = 200 and Study 3, N = 244). Agentic motivation, however, was universally associated with positive emotions. More research on a Role Ethics rather than Relative Autonomy conception of agency may improve our understanding of human motivation, especially across cultures.

What makes some act immoral? While Western theories of morality often define harmful behaviors as centrally immoral, whether or not this is applicable to other cultures is still under debate. In particular, Confucianism emphasizes civilized behavior as fundamental to moral excellence. We designed three studies examining how the word "immoral" is used by Chinese and Westerners. Layperson-generated examples were used to examine cultural differences in which behaviors are called "immoral" (Study 1, N = 609; Study 2, N = 480), and whether "immoral" behaviors were best characterized as particularly harmful vs.uncivilized (Study 3, N = 443). Results suggest that Chinese use the word "immoral" to label behaviors that are particularly uncivilized, while Westerners link immorality more tightly to harm. More research into lay concepts of morality is needed to inform theories of moral cognition and improve understanding of human conceptualizations of social norms.