Moral virtues inferences: When limited information affects our attribution of virtues

Abstract

In everyday life, when we have to formulate judgements, we often end up being influenced by information that is not directly related to the matter at hand. This happens both when we encounter the person in the real-life world, but also in the cyber-world, when, for example, we use social networks. In both cases, indeed, based simply on a few images or short stories, we may start to believe fake news or judge someone by generalising limited information to the overall judgement of that person/situation, as it happens in the halo effect. Even moral assessment can be influenced by limited, non-moral information; however, little is known on how this influence can affect our moral inferences about someone’s virtues. We conduct three experiments, in which we assess how aspects non-directly connected to moral information, such as looks or fortuitous events, can affect our judgement about someone’s morality. The experiments focus on the use of very limited information (e.g., attractiveness and/or short anecdotes), to reproduce the typical information available on a social network (e.g., people post selfies, or brief personal stories about their thoughts and feelings, or brief descriptions of personal events). In all experiments, the participants were asked to judge the moral virtues (honesty, courage, wisdom, and hope) of the person in the picture/narrative. Results show that pictures and narratives significantly affect the judgement of virtues. Moreover, the third experiment reveals a combined effect, by enhancing the influence of non-moral aspects on evaluation of someone’s moral dispositions.