Prinzing, M., Knobe, J., & Earp, B. D.
(2022). Cognition, Volume 239
Abstract
Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels “deep down”). We tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work.
From the Discussion section
What might explain these results? As discussed in the introduction, past research has found that people tend to assume that the true self calls one to be good. This could explain why fitting happiness and love are assumed to reflect a person’s true self. However, there is also evidence that, under certain conditions, people think that morally bad actions and feelings can reflect a person’s true self. In other words, people sometimes override their default assumption that the true self is good. Perhaps this is what is happening when people consider unfitting hatred. If the target of someone’s hatred is perfectly kind and wonderful, then it seems unlikely that there would be any sort of external, social pressure to hate that target person. Hence, if a person hates them nonetheless, people may override their default assumption that the person’s true self is good and conclude that the hatred reflects the person’s true self. Indeed, previous research has found that people think hateful, racist behavior is more reflective of a person’s true self when that person was not raised to be racist (Daigle & Demaree-Cotton, 2022). Hence, it may be that, in line with correspondent inference theory (Jones & Harris, 1967), when a person is not at all encouraged to feel hatred but feels hatred nonetheless, people are more inclined to think that the hatred reflects the person that they are deep down inside.
Some notes:
The fittingness hypothesis states that people's emotion attributions are influenced by their judgments about whether the emotion is merited or "called for" by the circumstances. For example, people might be less likely to believe that a person is happy if they have just done something morally bad.
The true self hypothesis states that people's emotion attributions are influenced by their judgments about whether the emotion reflects how the person feels "deep down." For example, people might be less likely to believe that a person is happy if they have been acting in a way that is contrary to their true values.
The study found that the true self hypothesis was better supported than the fittingness hypothesis. In other words, people's judgments about whether an emotion reflects the person's true self had a stronger impact on their emotion attributions than their judgments about whether the emotion was merited.
The study's findings suggest that people's emotion attributions are not simply based on the objective circumstances of a situation. Instead, they are also influenced by people's beliefs about the person's true self and whether the emotion is consistent with that person's values.
