Morality’s Centrality to Liking, Respecting, and Understanding Others

We examine morality’s relationship to three distinct dimensions of social perception: liking, respecting, and knowing a person. Participants completed two independent tasks. First, they rated acquaintances’ morality, competence, and sociability, and how much they liked, respected, and knew those acquaintances. In the second task, they rated a variety of moral and competence traits on their importance to liking, respecting, and knowing a person....