Comparing the Effects of Decision Time and Direct Decision Processing Information on (Moral) Character Evaluations

Which decision processing information is most diagnostic for assessing (moral) character? We test if decision time is a more ambiguous cue than more direct types of decision processing information, such as difficulty, doubt, or effort. Our direct information hypothesis predicts that these more direct cues will have a larger effect on competence, warmth, and morality ratings than decision time. Participants (N = 871) evaluated a decision maker who made a moral or monetary choice in four scenarios (within-subjects) and were provided with five different types decision process information (time, difficulty, doubt, effort, control condition with no information). Inconsistent with the hypothesis, the effect of direct types of process information on warmth and morality evaluations were no different than that of decision time. However, for competence we found that doubt and (marginally) difficulty had stronger effects on competence ratings than decision time, thus partially supporting our hypothesis. Observers may use any type of decision process information, ambiguous or direct, as a cue to make inferences about the decision maker’s moral motives. For competence evaluation, however, results suggest that this same decision process information may be interpreted differently, as cognitive capacity.