Abstract
Newman and Cain (Newman, Cain 2014 Psychol. Sci. 25, 648–655 (doi:10.1177/0956797613504785)) reported that observers view a person's choices as less ethical when that person has acted in response to both altruistic and selfish (commercial) motivations, as compared with purely selfish interests. The altruistic component reduces the observers' approval rather than raising it. This puzzling phenomenon termed the ‘tainted altruism’ effect, has attracted considerable interest but no direct replications in prior research. We report direct replications of Newman and Cain's Experiments 2 and 3, using a larger sample (n = 501) intended to be fairly representative of the US population. The results confirm the original findings in considerable detail.
Highlights
Subject Category: Psychology and cognitive neuroscience Subject Areas: psychology Keywords: tainted altruism, direct replication, pre-registered study
We defined the difference between the averaged liking ratings from the Charity and Advertising conditions as the basic effect of tainted altruism
The term ‘attributional cynicism’ was used by Critcher and Dunning to describe the phenomenon in which people tend to judge seemingly selfless acts as more selfish than seems warranted in terms of Bayesian reasoning [11]
Summary
Subject Category: Psychology and cognitive neuroscience Subject Areas: psychology Keywords: tainted altruism, direct replication, pre-registered study. People frequently choose behaviours that fulfil different kinds of motivations. They often seek both selfish and altruistic goals at the same time. Tainted altruism affects an observers’ moral appraisals of another person’s action and characters and their own behavioural choices. This influential paper has been cited over 150 times (Google Scholar, 14 June 2021) and is part of a broader literature examining the reactions that others have to prosocial behaviour (for two very recent reviews, see [2], and [3]). It is important for any field to identify which important findings are replicable, and which are not, and the general neglect of this step is sure to impede progress (cf. [5])
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