Reactions to morally motivated deviance

•Morally motivated deviants display deviant behavior for moral reasons.•They often face severe social backlash, even though people value morality.•Negative responses may be due to threats to self-concepts and group-cohesion.•It is important to understand the process that underlies these negative reactions.•Investigating different motives for deviant behavior might offer valuable insights.

People value morality in themselves and others. They want to be moral and good individuals, associate themselves with others who share their moral values, and belong to moral groups. As an ironic consequence of the importance of morality, people sometimes respond negatively to morally motivated deviants, and dislike others who overtly display moral behavior. These negative reactions may not only reduce the chance that people will learn from the exemplary behavior of others, it may also prevent moral exemplars from displaying moral behavior in the future, which makes these reactions problematic. Important questions that will be discussed in this review are why and when people respond negatively to morally motivated others.