A gender difference in effort moralization?

I appreciate how attentive the authors were to my suggestions, and I now feel confident in the project proceeding. 

I will note one issue that I think could use additional refinement, either now or in Stage 2. While I appreciate that the authors dropped the theoretical models that I believed had insufficient theoretical justification, I was now left a little unclear about how different results that could arise from the experiment may shed light on psychological theory. It could be helpful for the authors to run through some of the possible results of their research to give readers more of a sense of what's at stake.

E.g., if we do not find any differences between the male and female versions across both the work and care context, it would suggest that gender has little impact on effort moralization; if we find that there are differences between men and women in the care context but not in the work context, it would suggest X; if we find that there are difference between men and women in the work context but not in the care context, it would suggest Y; if we find that there are differences between men and women in both the work and care contexts, it would suggest Z. 

Basically, I want some sense of the competing predictions implied by your experimental setup. As I said in my previous review, it's not that all of these competing predictions need to have strong backing from prior work, but I want to understand what different patterns of results may mean for the issues you're interested in. This will help guide readers as they read the rest of the paper, giving them a sense of what the implications of the data are when you're presenting them. Obviously, this will be unpacked more in the discussion once the data are in, but I think it should be telegraphed a bit more earlier in the paper to help readers understand the theoretical value of the work. 

I wish the authors good luck in this project and look forward to reviewing the results once the research is completed! 

I appreciated the opportunity to review this proposal. Overall, I find it to be well-considered and poised to address meaningful gaps in the effort moralization literature, specifically, and research on social cognition and person perception, broadly. That said, I think the authors can improve the proposal by providing more details about the theoretical accounts they are attempting to disentangle with these studies. I will first answer the templated questions from PCI before providing additional thoughts and minor suggestions. 

 1A. The scientific validity of the research question(s). I think the authors are proposing valid and important studies. They are correct in noting gaps in the literature related to insufficient diversity in target gender and social contexts. These studies will address issues about the generalizability of effort moralization while also addressing questions about gender & contextual differences in person perception that are interesting in their own right. 
1B. The logic, rationale, and plausibility of the proposed hypotheses (where a submission proposes hypotheses). I think the general rationale of the studies is sound. That said, I found the set-up of the competing hypotheses lacking in detail and clarity. I appreciated that the authors are setting up the studies in a way that may support multiple patterns of results, but it was not clear to me what theoretical insights would be gleaned from one pattern being supported vs. another. Also, it was not clear to me how the authors would interpret the package of findings if one of Models A-C being is supported in Study 1 and  Model D is supported in Study 2. To what extent are these models complementary or competing, and why would the change from work to care contexts alter the pattern of results? The justifications for the 4 different models were the weakest part of the proposal, in my opinion, and I think the authors could strengthen the proposal by further detailing the key competing predictions of these models and expressing what the theoretical implications are of one pattern of results being supported versus another. The names of the different models succinctly capture the pattern of results being hypothesized, but the theoretical justifications for the models were lacking. To be clear, I do not think the competing models are essential to the proposal - I think that noting the gaps in the literature and wanting to examine variation in effort moralization effects are sufficient for motivating the research. But if the studies are designed to adjudicate between different theoretical perspectives, I would like the authors to help me understand what those perspectives are and the implications of one or another being supported.  
1C. The soundness and feasibility of the methodology and analysis pipeline (including statistical power analysis or alternative sampling plans where applicable). The methodology is sound and closely based on prior work in the area. The power analyses seem sufficient and based on reasonable effect sizes of interest. 
1D. Whether the clarity and degree of methodological detail is sufficient to closely replicate the proposed study procedures and analysis pipeline and to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the procedures and analyses. The information provided about the methods and focal dependent variables is sufficient, I do not think there is room for undisclosed flexibility in analyses.  
1E. Whether the authors have considered sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. absence of floor or ceiling effects; positive controls; other quality checks) for ensuring that the obtained results are able to test the stated hypotheses or answer the stated research question(s). I believe the proposed studies are well-suited for tackling the research questions and that the authors considered issues of comparison conditions, etc. That said, while I like the studies they offer and think they are the right ones to tackle first, I'm wondering if another study may be included in the package to provide further information about effort moralization dynamics: having one male and one female character in the same vignette while crossing the effort & work context. This would be interesting and provide a stronger test of some of the theoretical models offered by the authors about the roles of gender & social context in effort moralization. This design might reveal nuances that aren't observable in the designs the authors offered; however, the authors' designs seem positioned to offer insights that the design I'm proposing can't afford. So my proposal makes the most sense as an additional Study 3 rather than a replacement for what the authors are proposing.  Obviously, there are resource limitations that may preclude this possibility. But I'd like the authors to consider the tradeoffs of this design compared to what they proposed to see whether my design may afford them further traction in testing the competing hypotheses they offer. 

I only have one other point of major feedback, which is related to issues I discussed in 1B - I would like to see the authors investigate potential moderators  (e.g., endorsement of work norms, endorsement of traditional gender roles, etc). As far as I'm aware, nobody has identified consistent moderators of effort moralization. Testing for moderators would contribute more to the literature overall, even if those are treated as exploratory. This may also help the authors identify viable explanations for whichever pattern of results is supported. I think testing the influence of gender role endorsement would be particularly interesting, but there may be other potential moderators that are better suited for helping address the authors' key questions of interest. I ask the authors to consider whether a short scale (or multiple short scales) might be included in these studies to test for moderation effects. 

And finally, here are some minor comments:

• pg. 6: "which has meaningful implications, especially for work and education environments." - This can probably just be simplified to "which may have important implications for work and education environments." I also don't know why education is featured here instead of care, given the emphasis on care going forward. Is this a typo?
• pg. 6: "blind spots" in the section header seems a bit pejorative, it might be better to say "gaps" or something like that. Anecdotally, we were very aware of the gap in studying gender effects in our 2023 paper, but we decided to focus on male names to simplify our initial studies, knowing that these issues deserved their own paper. So I took "blind spots" a little more personally than you likely intended. It is certainly an important gap, but it's one that I think many of us have been aware of.
• pg. 9 : "This provides insights that more accurately reflect the cooperative dynamics found in everyday life." - I think you can make the point about studying another important cooperative dynamic without making unwarranted (or at least unsupported) claims about this being a "more accurate" reflection of cooperative dynamics. It is common to choose cooperation partners, you don't need to deny this to make your point about forced cooperation also being a common dynamic. If you want to double down on this, then provide some citations about how partner choice is not a real or important cooperative dynamic; otherwise, I'd suggest walking this back a bit and simply note that assigned cooperation is also important.
• pg 11 - "Since morality is perceived as a female core trait and therefore a standard for what to evaluate them on, effort might be moralized stronger for female agents, i.e. they will be judged more positively in terms of morality if they display high-effort behavior. " - I want more of an empirical backup for this claim, where does this come from? This relates to my comments in 1B, I do not totally understand what the authors take to be the theoretical claims they are testing. E.g., I am not aware that "morality is perceived as a female core trait", can the authors back this up with a citation, or is this their conjecture/theorizing? What aspect of morality are you talking about here, all moral traits or some specific moral traits?
• pg. 11: You can also make the point about what "punishment" means for the female high morality model a bit clearer. In Figure 1, it looks like low-effort females are expected to be seen as more moral than high-effort males; the "punishment", I assume, is then a greater difference between high- and low-effort moral character for females than males? It seems weird to call this "punishment", I think, I'd rather the authors be more specific about the empirical predictions rather than baking in interpretations of the predictions into the model. Including more specifics, and perhaps reconsidering some word choice, seems appropriate.
  
  
  

Thanks again to the authors for their efforts, and I hope that my feedback is helpful in pushing their project forward.

Jared Celniker