Antecedents of Moral Pride: the Harder the Action, the Greater the Pride?

Abstract

The study's aim was to analyze if some specific types of action generate higher levels of moral pride. Three variables were analyzed: whether the actions involved going against the group majority, whether they involved a personal cost of a different kind and whether they were the result of a prior intention. Participants were 160 adolescents aged between 14 and 16. Sixteen scenarios were designed (two for each combination of the three variables) in which someone needed help. Half of the participants were presented with 8 of these scenarios, and half with the other 8. In each scenario, participants were asked to state what they would feel and do and how much pride they would feel if they helped. Curiously enough, both prosocial behaviors which involved going against the majority, F(1, 140) = 60.36, p = .001, η2 = .301 and those which involved a personal cost of a different kind, F(1, 140) = 10.17, p = .002, η2 = .068 generated less moral pride.

Forgiveness contributes to the moral licensing effect in a multiple victim context

“…It would appear that disagreeing with the team on forgiving a transgression, when one wants to forgive and the team does not, discourages one from engaging in deviant behaviour. This could be due to the individual weighing the potential social costs of disagreeing, which the literature has found to reduce the amount of pride someone could feel when engaging in moral action (Etxebarria et al, 2014;Pascual, et al, 2019). This may have led to less willingness to engage in deviant behaviour.…”

“…the decision to forgive) as others in a multiple victim context generates more pride than going against the consensus of the other victims. Moreover, it appears that pride is severely depressed when the participant disagrees with the other victims and forgives the transgressor without their support (see also Etxebarria et al, 2014, Pascual et al, 2019. This may subsequently supress moral licensing, which has been found to be preceded by an increase pride (Khan & Dhar, 2006;Aquino, et al, 2011).…”

“…But, if the other victims do not forgive, and the participant does, then the participant should feel less proud. This would be due to the participant weighing the social costs of forgiveness (see Etxebarria et al, 2014;Raj et al, 2019). In this condition the participant may have reason to be concerned about how the other victims see them, thus feel less proud of their behaviour, and thus may not achieve the buffer to self-regard required for moral licensing to take place (Khan & Dhar, 2006).…”

“…If the team did not forgive, then participant forgiveness should not lead to moral licensing. This may possibly be due to the perceived disagreement extinguishing the pride that would have been otherwise experienced through the moral act (see Etxebarria et al, 2014). Pride was expected to act as a mediator of the effect.…”

“…Alternatively, disagreeing with other victims (i.e. forgiving when the other victims do not forgive) in a multiple victim context may cause the forgiver to anticipate a social cost (for an example, see Etxebarria et al, 2014) -a sentiment that may suppress the forgivers desire to act immorally. Lastly, I tested the idea that relation between forgiveness and moral licencing was mediated by pride.…”