More Pride When Remembering Imagined Difficult Moral Actions and Less Pride When Actually Imagining Doing Them?

Abstract

In a previous study of moral pride carried out with adolescents, a paradoxical effect was observed: more costly imagined prosocial behaviors generated less pride. The aim of this study was to analyze whether this effect disappears in retrospect. Participants were 188 adolescents aged between 14 and 16 (96 girls) who were given diverse scenarios in which someone needed help. In some of the scenarios, providing this help required participants to either go against the majority or incur some other kind of personal cost. One group received scenarios set in the present (data from the previous study mentioned above) and the other received scenarios set in the past. Although participants were not randomly assigned to one of the two conditions, all came from the same social context. All participants were asked to state how proud they would feel if they helped. The hypothesis was confirmed: while in the present both imagined prosocial behaviors which involved going against the majority and those that involved other costs generated less pride, when the scenarios were presented in the past, they generated more pride. These results suggest that while moral pride may have a limited reinforcing effect in the present, its retrospective effect is greater.

Keywords:

• Moral pride
• personal costs
• group influence
• adolescents
• gender differences

Author Contributions

Susana Conejero, Aitziber Pascual and Itziar Etxebarria contributed to the design and implementation of the research; Susana Conejero and Itziar Etxebarria contributed to the analysis of the results; and Susana Conejero, Aitziber Pascual and Itziar Etxebarria contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research project was supported by a grant from the University of the Basque Country and the Basque Government for the research group Culture, Cognition and Emotion (grant reference: IT-1187-19).

Notes on contributors

Susana Conejero

Susana Conejero is an Assistant Professor of Emotion and Emotional Competences at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. Her research focuses on guilt, moral pride, and gender differences in these emotions. She has also researched emotions in contexts of inter-group conflict and violence.

Aitziber Pascual

Aitziber Pascual is an Assistant Professor of Emotion and Emotional Competences at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. Her research focuses on guilt, moral pride, and gender differences in these emotions. She has also researched emotions in the field of eating disorders.

Itziar Etxebarria

Itziar Etxebarria was a Full Professor of Basic Psychology at the University of the Basque Country until 2018. She has conducted research on the role of diverse individual and family factors (particularly affective ones) in prosocial behavior and moral internalization, as well as self-conscious emotions (above all, guilt and moral pride). Moreover, in all her research she has always analyzed gender differences.