Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34599174›Full record

ArticleNature communications2021

How social relationships shape moral wrongness judgments.

Brian D Earp, Killian L McLoughlin, Joshua T Monrad, Margaret S Clark, Molly J Crockett

Erratum issuedOpen access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 18 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
18citing papers in PubMed
6.5field-weighted citation impact, top 2% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

18 citing papers in PubMed, 82 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
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  3. Infants use helping to infer the existence and strength of caring relationships.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
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  5. Expectations of Reciprocal Generosity Are Specific to Equal Relationships.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Perceived Stress and Society-Wide Moral Judgment.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2025
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Gratitude Is Morally Sensitive.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2024
    Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Children's Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2023
    Article
  18. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Brian D EarpDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. brian.earp@yale.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9691-2888
Killian L McLoughlinDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Joshua T MonradDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7377-2074
Margaret S ClarkDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6511-113X
Molly J CrockettDepartment of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. molly.crockett@yale.edu.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8800-410X
Yale University · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Judgments of whether an action is morally wrong depend on who is involved and the nature of their relationship. But how, when, and why social relationships shape moral judgments is not well understood. We provide evidence to address these questions, measuring cooperative expectations and moral wrongness judgments in the context of common social relationships such as romantic partners, housemates, and siblings. In a pre-registered study of 423 U.S. participants nationally representative for age, race, and gender, we show that people normatively expect different relationships to serve cooperative functions of care, hierarchy, reciprocity, and mating to varying degrees. In a second pre-registered study of 1,320 U.S. participants, these relationship-specific cooperative expectations (i.e., relational norms) enable highly precise out-of-sample predictions about the perceived moral wrongness of actions in the context of particular relationships. In this work, we show that this 'relational norms' model better predicts patterns of moral wrongness judgments across relationships than alternative models based on genetic relatedness, social closeness, or interdependence, demonstrating how the perceived morality of actions depends not only on the actions themselves, but also on the relational context in which those actions occur.

Indexed as

HumansInterpersonal RelationsJudgmentMoralsSocial Perception

Identifiers

PMID34599174
PMCPMC8486868
OpenAlexW3201981243

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.