Moral elevation is defined as the emotional response to witnessing acts of moral beauty. Studies have found that elevation entails pleasant feelings of warmth in the chest, feeling uplifted, moved, and optimistic about humanity. Elevation motivates affiliation with others as well as moral action tendencies. The main goal of this review was to gather and organize the empirical findings from the last 16 years of elevation research with regard to psychological and physiological characteristics, motivational tendencies, behavioral outcomes, neuronal mechanisms, moderators, and correlates of elevation. A secondary goal was to examine whether elevation is congruent with Fredrickson's (2001) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. It was concluded that there is strong evidence that elevation broadens the thought-action repertoire and relatively weak evidence that it builds lasting resources. Potential evolutionary functions, the forms of measurement of elevation, the process of how elevation is triggered, practical applications and directions for future research were also addressed.

Even though work-related factors have been found to play a crucial role in predicting presenteeism, studies investigating established theoretical frameworks of job design features and, in particular, underlying mechanisms are still very scarce. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of the areas of work life according to the Areas of Worklife Scale (AWS; Leiter & Maslach, 2004) on presenteeism. We examined mental and physical health as the underlying process of this relationship and assessed 2 presenteeism outcome measures and their relationship to each other-that is, the frequency of acts of presenteeism and work productivity. Using a cross-sectional design, the study was conducted in a sample of 885 employees from German public service. Results showed that the influence of some, but not all, areas of work life (workload, control, reward, and values) on both acts of presenteeism and health-related lost productivity was mediated by health indicators (well-being and musculoskeletal complaints). Moreover, we found a relationship between health-related lost productivity and acts of presenteeism. The present research clarifies the importance of work-related factors as antecedents of sickness presenteeism. The findings of our study also emphasize the necessity to include both acts of presenteeism and health-related lost productivity in presenteeism research and prevention. Presenteeism should be included as a measure in health prevention interventions because it reflects a crucial part of employee health that is not covered by other measures.

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Moral elevation is the prototypical emotional response when witnessing virtuous deeds of others. Yet, little is known about the role of individual differences that moderate the susceptibility to experiencing this self-transcendent emotion. The present experiment investigated the role of personality traits as moderators of elevation and its behavioral effects using economic games as a measure for prosocial behavior. One aim was to replicate prior findings on trait Engagement with Moral Beauty as moderator for experimentally induced state elevation. A second aim was to explore new potential moderators that were found to be connected to the moral realm: Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness vs. Anger, and Need for Cognition. Third, the present study is among the few investigating the effects of elevation on different prosocial actions and intentions. A sample of US American college students ( N = 144) was randomly assigned to either watch a morally uplifting or a humorous video clip. Afterwards, all participants played a dictator game and an ultimatum game, and were asked to volunteer in another time-consuming experiment. In line with our hypotheses, experimentally induced state elevation promoted prosocial behavior, however, only within the dictator game. Also in line with our hypotheses, higher levels of Need for Cognition and higher levels of Engagement with Moral Beauty (but not higher levels of Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness vs. Anger) increased prosocial behavior within the experimental group. In contrast to our hypotheses, none of the investigated personality traits moderated the proneness to experience the state of elevation after seeing an elevating video clip; only the behavioral consequences of elevation were moderated. Our results replicate and extend prior findings on moderators for elevation and exemplify the importance of investigating the role of personality traits in the context of the moral elevation phenomenon.