Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Do we praise altruistic acts because they produce socialbenefits or because they require a personal sacrifice? Onthe one hand, utilitarianism demands that we maximize thesocial benefit of our actions, which could motivatealtruistic acts. On the other hand, altruistic acts signalreputation precisely because personal sacrifice is a strong,costly signal. Consistent with the reputational account,these studies find that in the absence of reputational cues,people mainly rely on personal cost rather than socialbenefit when evaluating prosocial actors (Study 1).However, when reputation is known, personal cost acts as amuch weaker signal and play a smaller role in moralevaluations (Study 2). We argue that these results have far-reaching implications for the psychology and philosophy ofaltruism, as well as practical import for charitable giving,particularly the effective altruism movement.