Moral Self-Appraisals Explain Emotional Rewards of Prosocial Behavior

Andrew Miles () and Laura Upenieks
Additional contact information
Andrew Miles: University of Toronto
Laura Upenieks: Baylor University

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2022, vol. 23, issue 5, No 1, 1793-1814

Abstract: Abstract Scholars have argued that prosocial behavior produces positive emotions because it fulfills basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These explanations have largely neglected morality, despite the fact that prosocial behaviors are widely considered to be moral. To determine whether seeing oneself as acting morally—moral self-appraisals—explained this effect, we conducted a preliminary measurement study followed by three online experiments that collectively include nearly 2000 respondents. A meta-analysis of our experimental results revealed that recalling or performing prosocial behavior has a small positive effect on positive emotion (β = 0.12, p

Keywords: Prosocial behavior; Morality; Self-determination; Mediation; Positive affect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-021-00434-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jhappi:v:23:y:2022:i:5:d:10.1007_s10902-021-00434-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-021-00434-w

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().