Coalitionality shapes moral elevation: evidence from the U.S. Black Lives Matter protest and counter-protest movements

Author:

Holbrook Colin1ORCID,Fessler Daniel M. T.234,Sparks Adam Maxwell5ORCID,Johnson Devin L.6,Samore Theodore2,Reed Lawrence I.7

Affiliation:

1. Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA

2. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

3. Kindness Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

4. Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

5. Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, ON N1G1Y4, Canada

6. Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, ON, Canada L8S4K1

7. Department of Psychology, New York University, ON NY10003, USA

Abstract

Witnessing altruistic behaviour can elicit moral elevation , an emotion that motivates prosocial cooperation. This emotion is evoked more strongly when the observer anticipates that other people will be reciprocally cooperative. Coalitionality should therefore moderate feelings of elevation, as whether the observer shares the coalitional affiliation of those observed should influence the observer's assessment of the likelihood that the latter will cooperate with the observer. We examined this thesis in studies contemporaneous with the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. Although BLM protests were predominantly peaceful, they were depicted by conservative media as destructive and antisocial. In two large-scale, pre-registered online studies (total N = 2172), political orientation strongly moderated feelings of state elevation elicited by a video of a peaceful BLM protest (Studies 1 and 2) or a peaceful Back the Blue (BtB) counter-protest (Study 2). Political conservatism predicted less elevation following the BLM video and more elevation following the BtB video. Elevation elicited by the BLM video correlated with preferences to defund police, whereas elevation elicited by the BtB video correlated with preferences to increase police funding. These findings extend prior work on elevation into the area of prosocial cooperation in the context of coalitional conflict.

Funder

Office of Scientific Research

U.S. Air Force

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

Multidisciplinary

Reference81 articles.

1. Newkirk VR. 2016 The permanence of Black Lives Matter. The Atlantic . See https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/movement-black-lives-platform/494309/.

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3. Evolutionary explanations of emotions

4. Tooby J, Cosmides L. 2008 The evolutionary psychology of the emotions and their relationship to internal regulatory variables. In Handbook of emotions (eds M Lewis, JM Haviland-Jones, LF Barrett), pp. 114-137. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

5. Tooby J, Cosmides L, Sell A, Lieberman D, Sznycer D. 2008 Internal regulatory variables and the design of human motivation: a computational and evolutionary approach. In Handbook of approach and avoidance motivation (eds AJ Elliot), pp. 251-271. Mahwah, NJ: Psychology Press.

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