Emotions Signal Authenticity: Understanding Lay Beliefs of Emotion and Altruism

Individuals in organizations are often motivated to appear altruistic. In the current research, we examine whether being emotional is an effective signal of altruistic character. Three studies find that emotion-driven prosocial deeds merit greater charitable credit than the same deeds without emotion. Furthermore, a lack of emotion, even when accompanied by logical reasons for giving, triggers suspicion. Although theories that reject the...