College of Education Science, Hubei Normal University, Hubei, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Macao SAR, China.
Psych J. 2022 Aug;11(4):560-570. doi: 10.1002/pchj.541. Epub 2022 Jun 8.
Existing research on competence and morality focuses on their role in impression formation, overlooking their impact on each other. In five studies, we explored whether a target person's competence influences perceived morality of the target through interpersonal attraction. The results showed that perceived competence of a target individual was positively correlated with interpersonal attraction, which in turn positively correlated with morality (Study 1). Using an experimental design, we further found that competent individuals were considered more attractive, making them being perceived more moral than incompetent ones (Studies 2-4). In addition, an initially immoral individual was perceived as being moral when he was described as highly competent (Study 3) whereas an initially moral individual was perceived as being immoral when he was described as having low competence (Study 4). These findings were not completely accounted for by the halo effect (Study 5). The results supported that competence information promotes perceptions of morality in person perception.
现有关于能力和道德的研究主要集中在它们在印象形成中的作用上，而忽略了它们之间的相互影响。在五项研究中，我们探讨了目标个体的能力是否会通过人际吸引影响目标个体的感知道德。结果表明，目标个体的感知能力与人际吸引呈正相关，而人际吸引又与道德呈正相关（研究 1）。通过实验设计，我们进一步发现，有能力的个体被认为更具吸引力，因此他们被认为比没有能力的个体更具道德（研究 2-4）。此外，当一个最初不道德的个体被描述为非常有能力时，他会被认为是有道德的（研究 3），而当一个最初道德的个体被描述为能力低下时，他会被认为是不道德的（研究 4）。这些发现并不能完全用晕轮效应来解释（研究 5）。结果支持了能力信息在人际知觉中促进对道德的感知。
