Projecting Lower Competence to Maintain Moral Warmth in the Avoidance of Prosocial Requests

Abstract

When faced with prosocial requests, consumers face a difficult decision between taking on the request's burden or appearing unwarm (unkind, uncaring). We propose that the desire to refuse such requests while protecting a morally warm image leads consumers to under-represent their competence. Although consumers care strongly about being viewed as competent, five studies showed that they downplayed their competence to sidestep a prosocial request. This effect occurred across both self-reported and behavioral displays of competence. Further, the downplaying competence effect only occurred when facing an undesirable prosocial request, not a similarly undesirable proself request. The final studies showed that people specifically downplayed competence and not warmth. We further distinguished between social warmth (e.g., humor) and moral warmth (e.g., kindness), showing that when competence, social warmth, and moral warmth were all requisite skills for a prosocial task, people downplayed competence and social warmth more than moral warmth. These findings underscore that although people care strongly about being viewed as competent, they willingly trade off competence evaluations if evaluations of warmth-particularly moral warmth-are at risk.

Effects of the Presence and Behavior of In-Group and Out-Group Strangers on Moral Hypocrisy

“…Moreover, people who were grouped with the in-group stranger cared more about their reputation in the group and took considerable measures for impression management. Compared with the presence of out-group strangers, the presence of in-group members was of greater concern to the participants and promoted more prosocial behavior (Reinders Folmer and De Cremer, 2012;Liu and Lin, 2018). By contrast, individuals exhibited MH when confronted with the presence of out-group strangers.…”

A Review and Framework for Thinking about the Drivers of Prosocial Consumer Behavior

“…Because people are averse to casting the self-concept in a negative light, instead of refusing to perform a prosocial behavior, they might express lower competence (Liu and Lin 2018), leave the decision up to chance (Lin and Reich 2018), or avoid the possibility of a prosocial request altogether (Lin, Schaumberg, and Reich 2016). Consumers may also distort their perception of the wrongness of an antisocial action (Mazar, Amir, and Ariely 2008), react negatively to learning of the harmful consequences of their own consumption (Feygina, Jost, and Goldsmith 2010), and denigrate other consumers who demonstrate more ethical consumption patterns than they do (Zane, Irwin, and Reczek 2015).…”

A Vote of Competence: How a Similar Upbringing to Political Candidates Influences Voting Choice

“…Importantly, signaling competence can be beneficial to political candidates considering that individuals who appear competent, even if they are not, can exert greater influence over others (Anderson and Kilduff 2009). Yet interestingly, individuals, if given the choice, will underrepresent their levels of competence if it means increasing likability through perceptions of warmth or morality (Holoien and Fiske 2013; Liu and Lin 2018). This is especially true if they consider others to be lower status (Swencionis and Fiske 2016).…”