Morality, sociability, and competence are distinct dimensions in person perception. We argue that a person's morality informs us about their likely intentions, whereas their competence and sociability inform us about the likelihood that they will fulfill those intentions. Accordingly, we hypothesized that whereas morality would be considered unconditionally positive, sociability and competence ...

Greif, Avner, and Tadelis, Steven—A theory of moral persistence: Crypto-morality and political legitimacy Why, how, and under what conditions do moral beliefs persist despite institutional pressure for change?Why do the powerful often fail to promote the morality of their authority? This paper addresses these questions by presenting the role of crypto-morality in moral persistence. Crypto-moral...

Is classical tragedy contingent upon a Greco-Roman sense of morality? Or can tragedy exist within a Judeo-Christian universe as well? Literary critic Northrop Frye’s theory of high-mimetic tragedy inherits distinctions that Aristotle draws between tragedy and comedy in the Poetics. As a brief philological excursion will demonstrate, the binary distinctions upon which Aristotle builds his tragic...

Although previous research has focused on competence and sociability as the characteristics most important to positive group evaluation, we suggest that morality is more important. Studies with pre-existing and experimentally-created in-groups showed a set of positive traits to constitute distinct factors of morality, competence, and sociability. When asked directly, Study 1 participants report...

In The Order of Public Reason (2011a), Gerald Gaus rejects the instrumental approach to morality as a viable account of social morality. Gaus’ rejection of the instrumental approach to morality, and his own moral theory, raise important foundational questions concerning the adequate scope of instrumental morality. In this article, I address some of these questions and I argue that Gaus’ rejecti...

Longstanding debates about whether morality is best defined in terms of emotions or judgments have been recently rekindled. In this essay, we review recent approaches from social psychology and moral neuroscience that have emphasized emotions and intuitions as central to morality. We assert that the results of developmental science research on judgments and reasoning informs these approaches an...

Research has shown that warmth and competence are core dimensions on which perceivers judge others and that warmth has a primary role at various phases of impression formation. Three studies explored whether the two components of warmth (i.e., sociability and morality) have distinct roles in predicting the global impression of social groups. In Study 1 (N=105) and in Study 2 (N=112) participant...