Abstract
Three studies (total N = 1486) investigated how inferences about a person’s current moral character guide forecasts about that person’s future moral character and future misfortunes, and tested several plausible moderating variables. Inferences about current moral character related (very strongly) to forecasts about future moral character and also (less strongly) to forecasts about future misfortunes. These relationships were moderated by two variables: Relations between inferences and forecasts were somewhat weaker when perceivers made judgments about children, compared to judgments about adults, and relations between character inferences and forecasts about misfortunes were somewhat stronger among perceivers who more strongly believed in karma. In contrast, results provided no evidence of any moderating effects due to perceivers’ beliefs about the stability of moral dispositions (i.e., implicit personality theories). These results show how dispositional inferences, moral judgments, and beliefs about karmic justice interact to shape forecasts about the future.
Highlights
Preliminary analyses assessed whether inferences about current moral character sensibly reflect features of the vignettes
Primary analyses examined relations between inferences about current character and forecasts about future character and future misfortunes, and tested hypothesized moderators. (Full models and alternative analyses are presented in the S1 File.) Analyses were performed as mixed-effects models using the lme4 package in R, including random intercepts and slopes for moral character inferences nested within participant, to account for repeated measures
These results replicate previous findings [18]), and show that the intentionality manipulation produced meaningful variability in current moral character inferences, allowing us to test the relationship between inferences and moral forecasts
Summary
On the basis of our inferences about a person’s moral character, we may forecast their future—predicting whether an individual will continue be good or bad in coming years, and predicting the fortunes and misfortunes that they might experience over the course of their lives. Just how strongly do inferences about someone’s current moral character guide forecasts about their future character and future fortunes? A large literature documents how people infer current dispositions from past behavior [1,2,3]—including inferences about moral character [4,5,6]—much less is known about how moral inferences inform forecasts about the future. We present three studies that help fill this gap by testing three plausible moderators of the relationships between moral inferences and moral forecasts, including psychological properties of the person perceived
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