The Paradox in Moral Character Judgement of Highly Altruistic Individuals: Investigating the Role of Predictability and Honesty-humility

This study explored why highly altruistic individuals are regarded as less moral from a third-party perspective and investigated the boundary conditions of this phenomenon. In Study 1 (N = 199), participants evaluated those who distributed all (vs. half) of their resources to others as being less predictable and having a lower moral character. Study 2 (N = 238) examined the boundary condition of the mediation effect and found that honesty-humility moderated the relationship between altruism type and predictability. Low honesty-humility exacerbated the perception that highly altruistic individuals were less predictable, while high honesty-humility buffered this lower predictability, which further influenced people's judgements of the moral character of highly altruistic individuals. Study 3 (N = 213) optimized the experimental design to further test the role of predictability and honesty-humility to validate the robustness of the hypothesized model. Implications of the negative relationship between high altruism and moral character judgement are discussed.