Can exposure to specific acts of compassion and courage elicit moral elevation and related motives?

ABSTRACT

Previous studies suggest that witnessing virtuous acts triggers moral elevation—feeling inspired and motivated to imitate the virtue. However, there is a gap in understanding differences in elevation responses to distinct virtuous acts and subsequent motivations to perform similar virtuous behavior. This study explored the potential differences in responses following exposure to two relevant virtues: compassion and courage. A sample of undergraduate students (N = 369) completed an assessment of values and their relative importance, viewed two elevation eliciting videos that feature compassion and courage, then completed questionnaires assessing state-level responses to the videos. Results suggested, the compassion video elicited higher elevation than the courage video overall, and people with compassion as a top value reported higher elevation reactions to the compassion video. However, virtue-specific motivations were not different across videos and valuing courage was not associated with differences in reactions to the courage video. Potential implications and future directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral elevation
• courage
• compassion
• emotion elicitation
• values

Acknowledgments

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Credit author statement

Joanna Fagan: Conceptualization, Formal Analysis, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing; Katrina Henley: Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Resources, Project Administration; Shalet Punnoose: Writing—Review & Editing, Resources, Project Administration; Adam McGuire: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal Analysis, Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Project Administration.

Notes

1. See OSF page (McGuire, 2022) for more information regarding auxiliary variables.

Additional information

Funding

The authors report no funding.

Notes on contributors

Joanna G. Fagan

Joanna Fagan is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology and Counseling at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Katrina Henley

Katrina Henley is a former undergraduate student in the Department of Psychology and Counseling at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Shalet Punnoose

Shalet Punoose is a former graduate student in the Department of Psychology and Counseling at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Adam P. McGuire

Adam McGuire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Counseling at the University of Texas at Tyler and an Investigator at the VISN 17 Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans in Waco, TX.