Goodwin, Piazza, and Rozin (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. Journal of personality and social psychology , 106 (1), 148.
The researchers seek to prove that moral character is more preferred during making impression on others more than warmth. This objective is drawn from the fact that recent research in the relevant field had placed warmth ahead of moral character in making impression, and added that the two were inseparable. Therefore, the current study also seeks to prove that each of the elements is independent during impression making. They conduct seven different experimental and correlational studies in which they seek to compare the effects of the two elements in formulation of impression in different contexts. Their first two studies sought to and confirmed that social warmth traits and moral character were separable as opposed to what pre-existing studies had hypothesized. The study also discovers that information on the moral character of individuals was more fundamental in the creation of impression than that concerning warmth for a majority of the contexts that were experimented. For example, the research establishes that information on the character of individuals was more fundamental than warmth as it concerns uniquely human quality, their controllability, their apparent fundamentalness to identity, and their context-independence.
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The findings of this study, therefore, seem to indicate that people should not be blinded by former theories explaining the formation of perception that indicate that social warmth is the more compelling factor in impression creation. Instead, individuals should be dedicated to giving as many cues to their social character as possible since their new study finds the former notion to be faulty.
McGraw and Warren (2010). Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny. Psychological Science , 21 (8), 1141-1149.
In this later study, the researchers seek to show that humor is a result of violations that could still be responsible for invocation of disgust. They consider that the existing theories of humor such as those suggested by Freud (1928), Veatch (1998), and Gruner (1997) are self-insufficient in explaining the phenomenon of humor. They posit that such theories only deal with narrow sources of humor, which include irony and jokes. In their view, the extant theories are not capable of explaining the occurrence of humor across domains since they are domain-specific. It is further noted that the general theories if humor that encompass all the domains only do so through a supposition of broad antecedents and erroneously explain the concept of humor. The researchers hypothesize that benign violations elicit humor. Their findings suggest that moral violations that are found to appear simultaneously benign elicit amusement and laugher as well as disgust.
The two studies reviewed in this appraisal could be effective in testing existing theories so that new ones can be formulated. For example, the findings in the studies may be compared with a variety of findings from prior studies to establish the weaknesses of each of them. The fact that they find older theories to be faulted suggests a need exists for their appraisal as they did. The reviewed studies already signify a sense of superiority since they find faults and inefficiencies in the antecedent theoretical frameworks for explaining the elements of behavioral cognition under study. However, more studies should be conducted to establish the truthfulness of the new models under different circumstances that could result in the exhibition of the aspects being experimented. This move is critical in the reaffirmation of the self-sufficiency of the new models and avoiding shortcomings such as those that the researchers in the reviewed studies established in their respective investigations.
References
Goodwin, G. P., Piazza, J., & Rozin, P. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. Journal of personality and social psychology , 106 (1), 148.
McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign violations: Making immoral behavior funny. Psychological Science , 21 (8), 1141-1149.
