I appreciate your effort: Asymmetric effects of actors' exertion on observers' consequentialist versus deontological judgments

Moral judgment research has often assumed that when laypeople evaluate a moral dilemma, they focus on answering the question “Is action X wrong?” An alternative approach, inspired by virtue ethics, asserts that, in addition, laypeople seek to answer the question: “Would a good person do X?” As such, moral observers are sensitive to information that signals character. One important source of character information is the actor's level of exertion. In four studies, participants evaluated an actor who made either a consequentialist or deontological decision. In all studies, when the actor made the decision with little effort, participants rated the deontological decision more moral than the consequentialist decision. However, when the actor made the decision following high effort, this difference was attenuated. In Study 3, the pattern replicated most clearly when exertion was operationalized as effort to gain knowledge (versus emotional strain). These results highlight the important role that moral actors' effort plays on observers' moral and character judgments.