ArticleScientific reports2022
Moral foundations, values, and judgments in extraordinary altruists.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Choosing Not to Eat Meat: What Characterizes Independently Vegetarian Children?Developmental science · 2026Article
- Article
- Aristotle's intuitionist approach to morality guides a new direction in moral psychology.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Ethics trumps resources in women's and men's evaluations of potential mates and competitors.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The German translation of the Oxford utilitarianism scale: Validation and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the observations.PloS one · 2025Article
- Close relationship partners of impartial altruists do not report diminished relationship quality and are similarly altruistic.Communications psychology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Donating a kidney to a stranger is a rare act of extraordinary altruism that appears to reflect a moral commitment to helping others. Yet little is known about patterns of moral cognition associated with extraordinary altruism. In this preregistered study, we compared the moral foundations, values, and patterns of utilitarian moral judgments in altruistic kidney donors (n = 61) and demographically matched controls (n = 58). Altruists expressed more concern only about the moral foundation of harm, but no other moral foundations. Consistent with this, altruists endorsed utilitarian concerns related to impartial beneficence, but not instrumental harm. Contrary to our predictions, we did not find group differences between altruists and controls in basic values. Extraordinary altruism generally reflected opposite patterns of moral cognition as those seen in individuals with psychopathy, a personality construct characterized by callousness and insensitivity to harm and suffering. Results link real-world, costly, impartial altruism primarily to moral cognitions related to alleviating harm and suffering in others rather than to basic values, fairness concerns, or strict utilitarian decision-making.
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