Moral expansiveness and pro-environmentalism: the mediating role of moral emotions

Moral circles represent the figurative boundaries that distinguish the human and non-human entities that are considered to have moral worth from the entities that are considered to lack moral worth. The extent to which individuals have wide-reaching boundaries is referred to as moral expansiveness. Investigations into the psychological processes that underlie moral circle decision-making and moral expansiveness are only just beginning. Through two studies, we investigated the mediating role of moral emotions as a potential mechanism linking individual differences in moral expansiveness with pro-environmental outcomes. In Study 1, anger mediated the link between moral expansiveness and pro-environmental behavioural intentions. We replicated and extended this finding in Study 2 using two culturally distinct samples (the United States and Japan). Unlike anger, the mediating effect of disgust depended on the culture and specific form of moral judgment. The mediating effect of disgust was significant only in the United States and in relation to pro-environmental and prosocial decision-making for in-groups. Together, these findings provide some of the first evidence of the psychological mechanisms linking moral expansiveness to subsequent pro-environmental decision-making and highlight anger as a crucial emotional component.