Reply to Landy et al.: Terms and conditions may apply

Landy, Piazza, and Goodwin (LP&G) have codeveloped a seminal and indispensable new model of person perception (1, 2). While endorsing LP&G’s model, we recently challenged one of its auxiliary hypotheses: the morality dominance hypothesis (MDH) (3). LP&G critiqued our studies, arguing that they merely qualify the MDH (4). We concur that the MDH must be qualified (or rejected) but hold that LP&G’s critiques are insubstantial and that their proposed qualification is inaccurate.

LP&G critiqued us for measuring “transient” liking rather than global impressions. Global impressions, they say, are more relevant to the MDH. This critique is misleading; we measured implicit liking, which is among the least transient constructs in social cognition (5). Moreover, it is unclear whether LP&G’s distinction between liking and global impressions is meaningful—LP&G do not define “global impression,” but other researchers have shown that (i) liking is a core component of global impressions and (ii) liking is the component of global impressions that morality most strongly predicts (6). LP&G then note that our participants always desired friendship with the moral target—this finding, they argue, suggests that morality dominates over goal conduciveness. However, to show that morality dominates over goal conduciveness, one must show that morality is positive in contexts where morality opposes participants’ goals. Friendship is not such a context—it introduces other goals (e.g., affiliation) for which morality is conducive. Thus, the “desired friendship” measures, which were employed as manipulation checks, cannot speak to the MDH. Participants might have desired friendship with moral people not because morality dominates but because morality is conducive to friendship goals.

Concerning experiment 1, LP&G noted that mercifulness relates more to warmth than to morality. As we showed, however, mercifulness and morality are strongly related, and LP&G themselves categorized forgiving (a synonym for merciful) as a “high morality/high warmth” trait (1).

LP&G critiqued experiment 2 for “confounding” dishonesty with competence—a red herring, since dishonesty was aligned with competence in every condition and thus cannot explain our findings. LP&G also state that “since [the dishonest spy] is pursuing a praiseworthy goal (defeating ISIS), it stands to reason that people would like him more.” This only stands to reason if the MDH is false; despite his praiseworthy goal, the dishonest spy was perceived as far more immoral than the honest spy. Thus, the MDH predicts a preference for the honest spy, which our findings contradict.

LP&G state that the results of experiment 3 are difficult to interpret because the explicit and implicit measures misaligned. As we showed, however, every plausible interpretation contradicts the MDH.

Ultimately, LP&G issued the following qualification to the MDH: “Morality is judged positively in others, so long as one views oneself as pursuing morally good ends.” However, this qualification does not reflect our findings. In experiment 2, participants who were assigned to “defeat ISIS”—surely a moral end—disliked morality in others. Accordingly, our findings indicate the MDH must be rejected or qualified as follows: Morality is judged positively in others, so long as one perceives morality in others as goal-conducive.