Anticipated Affect Predicts Moral Praise and Character Judgments

In four preregistered studies (total N = 5,067), we investigated whether people use their own anticipated affective responses to a situation to make judgments about the praiseworthiness of helping and the moral character of helpers. We found that helpers in more affectively arousing scenarios were seen as more morally motivated, received greater praise, and were seen as having more positive moral character, even when controlling for the perceived benefits of helping. Describing helpers as unemotional reduced the effect of observers' anticipated affect on character judgments. These results suggest that when making praise and character judgments, people not only consider the consequences of a helper's actions but also the emotions they experience when engaging in them-and that they use their own anticipated emotional experience to do this.