More Pride When Remembering Imagined Difficult Moral Actions and Less Pride When Actually Imagining Doing Them?

In a previous study of moral pride carried out with adolescents, a paradoxical effect was observed: more costly imagined prosocial behaviors generated less pride. The aim of this study was to analyze whether this effect disappears in retrospect. Participants were 188 adolescents aged between 14 and 16 (96 girls) who were given diverse scenarios in which someone needed help. In some of the scenarios, providing this help required participants to either go against the majority or incur some other kind of personal cost. One group received scenarios set in the present (data from the previous study mentioned above) and the other received scenarios set in the past. Although participants were not randomly assigned to one of the two conditions, all came from the same social context. All participants were asked to state how proud they would feel if they helped. The hypothesis was confirmed: while in the present both imagined prosocial behaviors which involved going against the majority and those that involved other costs generated less pride, when the scenarios were presented in the past, they generated more pride. These results suggest that while moral pride may have a limited reinforcing effect in the present, its retrospective effect is greater.