Feelings of elevation, elicited by witnessing another person perform a good deed, have been hypothesized to motivate a desire to help others. However, despite growing interest in the determinants of prosocial behavior, there is only limited evidence that elevation leads to increases in altruistic behavior. In two experiments, we tested the relationship between elevation and …
Tag Archives: elevation
Pohling, R., & Diessner, R. (2016). Moral elevation and moral beauty: A review of the empirical literature. Review of General Psychology, 20(4), 412-425.
Moral elevation is defined as the emotional response to witnessing acts of moral beauty. Studies have found that elevation entails pleasant feelings of warmth in the chest, feeling uplifted, moved, and optimistic about humanity. Elevation motivates affiliation with others as well as moral action tendencies. The main goal of this review was to gather and …
Vianello, M., Galliani, E. M., &Haidt, J. (2010). Elevation at work: The effects of leaders’ moral excellence. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(5), 390-411.
Leaders influence followers in many ways; one way is by eliciting positive emotions. In three studies we demonstrate that the nearly unstudied moral emotion of ‘elevation’ (a reaction to moral excellence) mediates the relations between leaders’ and their followers’ ethical behavior. Study 1 used scenarios manipulated experimentally; study 2 examined employees’ emotional responses to their …