The Limits of the Primacy of Morality Hypothesis: Are Global Impressions of Experts Based Mainly on their Competence or Morality?

Abstract

According to the primacy of morality hypothesis, moral traits are the most substantial contributor to – and when positive, always contribute positively to – global impressions of others. In three experiments (N = 413), we asked participants to form global impressions of the financial advisor (Study 1a), car mechanic (Study 1b), and physician (Study 1c). Contrary to the primacy of morality hypothesis, we showed that when people evaluate experts, they are guided primarily by experts’ competence (solving or not solving clients’ problems), not morality (moral or immoral intentions). The global impressions of the experts who made a mistake and did not solve clients’ problems were negative regardless of the experts’ moral or immoral intentions. However, the competent experts were continually assessed positively regardless of their good or bad intentions. The meta-analysis showed that the effect of manipulated intention on global impression was not significant. The results pose a challenge to the idea that moral behaviors are the most relevant when making global impressions of others.