Moral Overconfidence: Immoral Actors’ Meta-Perceptions are Moderately Inaccurate and Overly Positive

Abstract

Across two actor and four observer samples we assess actor-observer asymmetries and judgment accuracy in contexts of immoral behavior. We examine the motives immoral actors ascribe to their own behavior, whether immoral actors can accurately predict the moral motive attributions third-party observers will make of their behavior (meta- perception), and the extent to which observers can accurately predict the self-reported motives of immoral actors (observer-accuracy). Using a direct approach where we solicit written instances of immoral behavior and accompanying motives and meta-motives, then provide those accounts to separate samples of observers, we find that immoral actors have low levels of meta-perceptive accuracy, whereas observers exhibit low to moderate levels of accuracy in judging the self- reported motives of immoral actors. Actors also exhibit a pattern of meta-perceptive inaccuracy we dub moral overconfidence: they systematically overestimate the positive attributions and underestimate the negative attributions that are made of them and their behavior. Further componential analyses of judgment accuracy reveal several trait moderators of accuracy among actors and observers.