Pro-social actions are often driven by emotional factors. For instance, emotions have been shown to play a decisive role in the way we judge the fairness of a situation (affect-as-information theory: e.g., Clore et al., 2001; Storbeck and Clore, 2008), and, thus, how we make decisions. Specific emotions like anger have also been shown to stimulate the motivation to fight injustice (Lerner et al., 2015). At the individual level, people might undertake altruistic actions as a way to relieve themselves from these negative emotions (what Cialdini (1991) calls ‘reflexive distress’) but also because these actions are expected by the social norms (‘normative distress’). Indeed, pro-social actions are usually taken in social contexts, and the perception of one’s behavior by third parties might hinder or facilitate the adoption of pro-social behaviors. Understanding the determinants of the perception of altruistic behaviors is thus a key research question to support pro-social actions in collective settings.

 

In the current study, Woo and Feldman (2024) aim to replicate the seminal work of Barasch et al. (2014), who showed that third parties hold more favorable views of agents undertaking pro-social actions when the latter are motivated by emotions. More precisely, the authors aim to replicate two studies of the original work by conducting a well-powered online experiment (US participants, Prolific, N=1,164). First, they will investigate whether donors who exhibit higher distress regarding the suffering of others are perceived as more moral and authentically concerned for others. Second, they will analyze whether individuals who expect material or reputational benefits from their altruistic deeds are perceived by third parties as less moral than those who act for emotional reasons. In addition to these two replication objectives, the authors propose extensions with pre-registered hypotheses that are inspired by Study 2 from the original work. They seek to investigate whether people are seen as more other-focused when they undertake a prosocial action (donation) and under different expected rewards (material, reputational, emotional benefits).

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two external reviewers and the recommender. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' and the recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.

 

List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

1. Barasch, A., Levine, E. E., Berman, J. Z., & Small, D. A. (2014). Selfish or selfless? On the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 393-413. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037207

 

2. Cialdini, R. B. (1991). Altruism or egoism? That is (still) the question. Psychological Inquiry, 2, 124-126. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1207/s15327965pli0202_3

 

3. Clore, G. L., Gasper, K., Garvin, E., & Forgas, J. P. (2001). Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition.

 

4. Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., & Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision making. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 799-823. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115043

 

5. Storbeck, J., & Clore, G. L. (2008). Affective arousal as information: How affective arousal influences judgments, learning, and memory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2, 1824-1843. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1751-9004.2008.00138.x

 

6. Woo, T. L. & Feldman, G. (2024). Revisiting the signal value of emotion in altruistic behavior: Replication and extensions Registered Report of Barasch et al. (2014) Studies 3 and 6. In principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/d5bmp