Symbolic Moral Self-Completion – Social Recognition of Prosocial Behavior Reduces Subsequent Moral Striving

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Moritz Susewind¹  Gari Walkowitz³ 

[1] Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Centre for Mental Health, University Hospital of Würzburg;Kitzberg Center for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy;Digital Ethics Group, TUM School of Governance, Technical University of Munich and Center Digitization;National Research University Higher School of Economics

关键词: prosocial behavior;    social influence;    social recognition;    self-regulation;    moral balancing;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.560188

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

According to theories on moral balancing, a prosocial act can decrease people’s motivation to engage in subsequent prosocial behavior, because people feel that they have already achieved a positive moral self-perception. However, there is also empirical evidence showing that people actually need to be recognized by others in order to establish and affirm their self-perception through their prosocial actions. Without social recognition, moral balancing could possibly fail. In this paper, we investigate in two laboratory experiments how social recognition of prosocial behavior influences subsequent moral striving. Building on self-completion theory, we hypothesize that social recognition of prosocial behavior (self-serving behavior) weakens (strengthens) subsequent moral striving. In Study 1, we show that a prosocial act leads to less subsequent helpfulness when it was socially recognized as compared to a situation without social recognition. Conversely, when a self-serving act is socially recognized, it encourages subsequent helpfulness. In Study 2, we replicate the effect of social recognition on moral striving in a more elaborated experimental setting and with a larger participant sample. We again find that a socially recognized prosocial act leads to less subsequent helpfulness compared to an unrecognized prosocial act. Our results shed new light on the boundary conditions of moral balancing effects and underscore the view that these effects can be conceptualized as a dynamic of self-completion.

【 授权许可】

CC BY