Moral Faces: How Spontaneous Ideological Inferences from Facial Cues Influence Moral Judgments

Ahreum Maeng ()
Additional contact information
Ahreum Maeng: Department of Marketing, School of Business, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66049, USA

Societies, 2024, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: This research demonstrates that individuals make moral judgments based on ideological inferences from facial cues. Using racially homogeneous male faces, four studies showed that individuals infer ideological beliefs—and thus group membership (in- versus out-group)—from a novel face and that the fit between the inferred social identity and the perceiver’s own social identity leads to judgments of moral superiority. Further evidence shows that a salient social identity moderates moral evaluation. These results reflect the automaticity of social categorization, which contributes to moral judgments of a person.

Keywords: social cognition; face perception; morality; social identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/14/8/143/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/14/8/143/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:14:y:2024:i:8:p:143-:d:1449811

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().