The Martyrdom Effect in Judgment: Fatal Self-Sacrifice Boosts Evaluations for Both Beneficial and Harmful Actors

Abstract

Consequentialist theories of judgment and choice hold that individuals and actions should be evaluated in terms of the outcomes they produce, but not on how they bring about (otherwise equivalent) outcomes. This paper demonstrates a striking violation of consequentialism in judgment when fatal martyrdom—sacrificing one's life for a cause—is introduced. Across six experiments (N_total = 4861), including one preregistered replication, US participants judged scenarios in which a protagonist takes actions to save members of his group from an attack. They evaluated the protagonist and his actions more positively when he (voluntarily) sacrificed his life in the process, compared with when he achieved the same goal without dying. This is despite the fact that the former scenario—which adds self-sacrifice to an otherwise identical chain of events—is clearly worse for the protagonist (and his fellow group members). Moreover, fatal martyrdom (self-sacrifice) boosted evaluations even when the protagonist belonged to a despised group and his actions produced harmful outcomes that served an aversive cause. These results show that people praise fatal martyrdom (self-sacrifice), regardless of its consequences, and regardless of whether they generally support or oppose the martyr and the martyr's cause. The experiments also examined several potential mechanisms and boundary conditions of this fatal martyrdom effect, and they show that the effect can occur even in the absence of human intergroup conflict.