Elevation and idealistic attitudes

Elevation, an emotion for prosocial contagion, is experienced more strongly by those with greater expectations of the cooperativeness of others
Adam Maxwell Sparks, Daniel M. T. Fessler & Colin Holbrook (2019)


Abstract

A unique emotion, elevation, is thought to underlie prosocial contagion, a process thereby witnessing a prosocial act leads to acting prosocially. Individuals differ in their propensity to experience elevation, and thus their proneness to prosocial contagion, but little is known about the causes of such variation. We introduce an adaptationist account wherein elevation marks immediate circumstances in which prosociality is advantageous, with this evaluation of circumstances hinging in part on prior expectations of others’ prosociality. In 15 studies, we add to evidence that elevation can reliably be elicited and mediates prosocial contagion. Importantly, we confirm the novel prediction–generated by our adaptationist account–that an idealistic attitude, which indexes others’ expected degree of prosociality, moderates the relationship between exposure to prosocial cues and experiencing elevation. Our findings inform both basic theorizing in the affective sciences and translational efforts to engineer a more harmonious world.

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>Attitudes can be characterized along a dimension we label “idealism-cynicism.” A more idealistic attitude towards someone indexes the expectation that the person tends to treat people prosocially; a more cynical (i.e., less idealistic) attitude towards someone corresponds to the expectation of more selfish behavior. An individual who has more idealistic prior attitudes towards the people involved in a social scenario should be more likely to interpret the witnessed behavior of the apparently prosocial exemplar as genuinely prosocial; more likely to expect cooperative responses to that behavior by others; and more likely to expect similar treatment herself in response to her own prosocial behavior. Conversely, a more cynical attitude towards the same individuals makes it less likely that the exemplar’s actions are interpreted as genuinely prosocial; less likely that other actors are expected to respond cooperatively to the original action; and less likely that the witness will assume that her own prosocial behavior would be rewarded. Accordingly, a witness’s idealism-cynicism towards the actors in a scenario (for simplicity, hereafter idealism) should moderate elevation and subsequent behavior in response to that scenario.<