2026 Articles

Moral Judgments of Outgroup Cultural Use

Mosley, Ariel J.; Solomon, Larisa Heiphetz

Objectives. Outgroup cultural use elicits controversy, including about whether it is immoral. The objective of the current work was to ask how laypeople morally evaluate individuals who adopt elements of outgroup culture for their own use and to probe a psychological mechanism underlying these evaluations.

Methods. In three studies, participants provided moral evaluations of actors who engaged in outgroup versus ingroup cultural use. In Study 2, participants additionally rated how harmful each actor's behavior was; in Study 3, participants learned whether or not each behavior caused harm.

Results. Study 1 demonstrated the basic effect that participants rated actors who engaged in outgroup cultural use as less moral than actors who did not. Two pre-registered follow-up studies highlighted the role of perceived harm in these moral judgments, as greater perceptions of harm led to harsher moral judgments of actors who used outgroup cultural elements among both Black and White perceivers.

Conclusions. By integrating work on intergroup relations and moral psychology, the current research suggests that some forms of outgroup cultural use may signal a moral shortcoming for high-status actors and is among the first to illuminate the cognitive processes driving these moral judgments.

Keywords: intergroup relations, morality, outgroup cultural use, social cognition, social psychology