People artificially inflated the moral value of personality traits they had been led to believe they possessed

Vonasch, Andrew, and Bradley A. Tookey. 2022. “Self-serving Bias in Moral Character Evaluations.” PsyArXiv. November 16. doi:10.31234/osf.io/su79g

Abstract: Are people self-serving when moralizing personality traits? Past research has used cross sectional methods incapable of establishing causality, but the present research used experimental methods to test this. Indeed, two experiments (N = 669) show that people self-servingly inflate the moral value of randomly assigned personality traits they believe they possess, and even judge other people who share those same traits as more moral, warm, and competent than those who do not. We explain various methodological challenges overcome in conducting this research, and discuss implications for both psychology and philosophy.