Recommendation

Are people who exert more effort in a task seen as more moral?

ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Jared Celniker, Ignazio Ziano and Michael Inzlicht
A recommendation of:

Is it Worth the Hustle? A Multi-Country Replication of the Effort Moralization Effect and an Extension to Generational Differences in the Appreciation of Effort

Abstract
Submission: posted 15 November 2024
Recommendation: posted 03 March 2025, validated 03 March 2025
Cite this recommendation as:
Fillon, A. (2025) Are people who exert more effort in a task seen as more moral?. Peer Community in Registered Reports, 100942. 10.24072/pci.rr.100942

Recommendation

This study seeks to understand cultural and age differences in the effort moralization effect, a phenomenon in which people who put more effort into a task are considered more moral, regardless of the quality or the morality associated with the task. This is shown in common phrases such as the “great resignation” or “quiet quitting”, which are mostly used against younger members of the population, in particular generation Z.
 
Tissot and Roth (2025) conducted a replication of a study from Celniker et al. (2023) which found evidence for this effect, with new samples from Mexico and Germany, to test potential cultural and age differences. 

The results indicated a generalization of the effort moralization effect in Germany and Mexico, with important heterogeneity in the effect found, and effects sizes that were smaller than in the original study conducted in the USA. However, no effect was found regarding age, as younger individuals judged effort as being important in the same way as older individuals. It is possible, therefore, that the effort moralization effect is a consistent bias that persists regardless of age.
 
The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth review. Based on ​detailed responses to the reviewers’ and recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and awarded a positive recommendation.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/tvgw2
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that was used to answer the research question was generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 
 
References
 
1. Celniker, J. B., Gregory, A., Koo, H. J., Piff, P. K., Ditto, P. H., & Shariff, A. F. (2023). The moralization of effort. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152, 60–79. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001259
 
2. Tissot, T. T. & Roth, L. H. O. (2025). Is it Worth the Hustle? A Multi-Country Replication of the Effort Moralization Effect and an Extension to Generational Differences in the Appreciation of Effort [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/ck4st_v4
Conflict of interest:
The recommender in charge of the evaluation of the article and the reviewers declared that they have no conflict of interest (as defined in the code of conduct of PCI) with the authors or with the content of the article.

Evaluation round #2

DOI or URL of the report: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/ck4st_v2

Version of the report: 3

Author's Reply, 27 Feb 2025

Dear Dr. Fillon,

 

please find our updated pre-print with your suggested changes attached to this resubmission.

We hope that we implemented everything successfully and are looking forward to the round-up of the project.

 

Greetings

 

Leopold Roth

Decision by ORCID_LOGO, posted 14 Feb 2025, validated 15 Feb 2025

Dear Authors,

Please find attached a commented document with typos and small changed to make before a final recommendation.

Best regards,

Adrien Fillon

Download recommender's annotations

Evaluation round #1

DOI or URL of the report: https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/ck4st

Version of the report: 2

Author's Reply, 12 Feb 2025

Decision by ORCID_LOGO, posted 30 Jan 2025, validated 01 Feb 2025

 
Dear Authors,
I now received reviews from the three previous reviewers, and they are all very positive, congratulations. Jared Celniker asked you to provide further information regarding the interpretation of several results. Please respond to these points by modifying as much as possible the discussion and as less as possible the introduction. The other reviewers asked you to take time correcting the past tense and typos. Please re-read attentively the paper to correct these.
When submitting the next version, please add a small cover letter explaining your changes regarding Jared's comments. No need to reply to the other reviewers.
Best regards,
Adrien Fillon
 

Reviewed by ORCID_LOGO, 21 Dec 2024

I was happy to review Round 2 of this project and learn about the authors' results. The authors followed the protocol they described in Round 1. I will thus focus my review on the presentation of the findings and structure of the paper.

Overall, I thought the presentation of the paper made sense, though there are some tweaks that I believe will help the flow of the paper and help readers understand the contributions and stakes of the research.

First, I think the authors should spend more time in the introduction and discussion talking about the implications (societal and theoretical) of the null age findings. In the introduction, I was left wondering what the interpretation of a null effect might be, and I was left with that question unresolved by the time I finished the paper. The Bayesian statistical approach used by the authors provides moderate to strong evidence of a null age effect. I want to authors to grapple with this more, what it means for the social issues they start the paper with and for theories about the generalizability of effort moralization effects. E.g., the lack of moderation by age seems to further support the idea that effort moralization is generalizable, beyond the effects that were replicated in different cultures than prior work. As written, I am not clear on the way these data further illuminate psychological theory or contemporary issues in society. To be clear, I believe these data can be written up such that they provide clear value, but I think some revisions to the introduction and discussion will be necessary to accomplish that. 

I also found the presentation of the warmth and competence results to be surprising, given those analyses were not discussed earlier in the manuscript. Since it was not part of the authors' focal hypotheses, I might relegate those analyses to the supplemental materials to open up more space for discussing the issues I described above. Alternatively, if the authors think it is important to keep those analyses in the main text, I would ask them to set up those analyses a bit better, to provide a reader a sense of why these results are important to highlight despite not being directly connected to the main replication or extension. 

Lastly, there were some verb tense and other grammatical issues throughout the manuscript that, while minor, should be addressed. E.g., on page 18, it reads "We have no a priori assumptions..." when it should read "We had no...", presumably this is a leftover from the Round 1 version of the manuscript. I'd advise the authors to carefully review the manuscript to address these types of issues. 

After the authors address these issues, I believe the report will be ready to ship out to journals for publication. I congratulate the authors on conducting interesting research and wish them well in their revisions and future endeavors. 

 

P.S. The pay deservingness findings were interesting and a little perplexing to me. The authors may want to discuss these findings a bit more through the lens of cultural differences in the importance of morality in partner choice decision-making. The pay deservingness finding isn't a partner choice outcome, but it may be a proxy for it. I believe Duncan Stibbard-Hawkes has some work on cultural differences on the role of moral judgment in partner choice, though I can't find the paper at the moment. This isn't essential to discuss in the current paper, but it may be useful for the authors to consider when bulking up their theoretical discussion. 

 

Jared Celniker

 

 

 

 

Reviewed by , 27 Nov 2024

I think you did a great job. The paper still needs some copy-editing to put everything to the past tense and there are some typos (e.g., "adopted" instead of "adapted") but aside from that, I think this paper is ready. Congrats!

Reviewed by ORCID_LOGO, 24 Jan 2025

This is an excellent report and I think it should be accepted. I have no real issues and congraulate the authors on a job well done.

Here are responses to specific question:

2A. Whether the data are able to test the authors’ proposed hypotheses (or answer the proposed research question) by passing the approved outcome-neutral criteria, such as absence of floor and ceiling effects or success of positive controls or other quality checks.

Yes
 
2B. Whether the introduction, rationale and stated hypotheses (where applicable) are the same as the approved Stage 1 submission. This can be readily assessed by referring to the tracked-changes manuscript supplied by the authors.

This was harder for me to tell because there were many tracked changes. Some of this might simply be moving things around, but I am not sure. As far as I can tell, there were changes to the introduction, but I am ok with them. But I urge the editor to double check. With all the green marking, it was hard for me to say.
 
2C. Whether the authors adhered precisely to the registered study procedures.

Yes
 
2D. Where applicable, whether any unregistered exploratory analyses are justified, methodologically sound, and informative.

Yes
 
2E. Whether the authors’ conclusions are justified given the evidence.

Yes

 

I sign all my reviews,

Michael Inzlicht

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