Open Collections

Guan, Kate Wen

University of British Columbia

When good people break character by committing egregious wrongs, observers often appear distressed by the revelation that someone may not be the person they seemed. Yet, research offers few accounts as to how or why they may feel negatively. The present research investigates the effects of moral impression-violations; that is, events in which seemingly moral (or immoral) actors commit unexpectedly immoral (or immoral) behaviors. I present a novel theory that moral impression-violations threaten observers’ epistemological certainty in what they know about the world and other people, threatening danger. Nine highly powered studies show that moral impression-violations lead observers to feel decreased confidence judging character, more negative moral impressions of others, and a sense of meaning violation following these events. Chapter 2 specifically investigate these outcomes and compares them relative to the effects of a moral impression-confirmation of an immoral actor committing immoral behaviors in line with previous expectations. Chapter 3 then assesses the effect of the direction of the impression-violation, finding that impression-violations that go from better to worse are more impactful than those that go from worse to better. Chapter 4 considers the uniqueness of these effects to the moral domain, finding mixed evidence that moral impression-violations may be more impactful than analogous competence ones. Finally, Chapter 5 explores how individual and cultural differences in perceivers’ backgrounds moderate the severity of effects that they experience following these moral impression-violations from better to worse. My results contribute to ongoing research showing the importance of morality in people’s understanding of others and the world around them, and shed light on why even seemingly innocuous revelations about others’ characters can feel threatening.

Text

2024-08-19

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88975

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/