A Moral Virtue Theory of Status Attainment

Recognition has grown that moral behavior (e.g., generosity) plays a role in status attainment, yetit remains unclear how, why, and when demonstrating moral characteristics enhances status.Drawing on philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and organizational behavior, I criticallyreview a third route to attaining status: virtue, and propose a moral virtue theory of statusattainment to provide a generalized account of the role of morality in status attainment. Themoral virtue theory posits that acts of virtue elicit feelings of warmth and admiration (for virtue),and willing deference, towards the virtuous actor. I further consider how the scope and priorityof moralities and virtues endorsed by a moral community are bound by culture to affect whichmoral characteristics enhance status. In particular, I theorize that virtues pertaining to community(e.g., humility) and divinity (e.g., cleanliness) are more effective to attain status in collectivisticcultures; whereas virtues pertaining to autonomy (e.g., rights) are more effective to attain statusin individualistic cultures. Four experimental studies were conducted to examine the proposedtheory. Studies 1 to 3 found that demonstrating a variety of virtues, including humility,cleanliness, and (advocating for human) rights, elicited admiration for virtue, which in turn led avirtuous actor to attain status. Expressing humility and cleanliness was more effective inattaining status in a collectivistic culture (India) than in an individualistic culture (the U.S.).Importantly, the positive impact of virtues on status attainment generally did not depend on thevirtuous actor's levels of competence. Study 4 showed that expressing humility led people to seethe humble actor as a more desirable leader and to be influenced by the humble actor in acollaborative cognitive task. Humility and cultural self-construals interacted to affect the actor'sstatus through admiration for virtue. Specifically, individuals with high interdependent selfconstrualsadmired humility to a greater degree than those with low interdependent self