Guilt appeals in the field of persuasion are quite common. However, the effectiveness of these messages is sometimes ambivalent. It is widely acknowledged that guilt leads people to engage into prosocial behaviors, but the effects of guilt can also be counter-productive (e.g., reactance-like effects). We argue that the explanations for these contradictions remain unsatisfactory and suggest that taking into account the implications of underlying cognitive—especially attentional—mechanisms would provide a better understanding of these paradoxical outcomes. This article provides a brief review of the literature on the link between guilt and pro-social behaviors and its classical interpretations. We propose a reinterpretation of this link by taking into account specific attentional processes triggered by the emotion of guilt. Attentional biases are, in our opinion, better predictors of the effectiveness of a message than the amount of emotion induced by the same message. This consideration should guide future research in the field of guilt appeals and pro-social behaviors. Implications, in terms of a broader comprehension of the emotion–behavior association in decision making processes, are discussed.

According to the justified true belief (JTB) account of knowledge, people can truly know something only if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is JTB). This account was challenged by Gettier, who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called “Gettier-type cases,” wherein protagonists are justified in believing something to be true, but their belief was correct only because of luck. Laypeople may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. Although some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions, Turri et al. found no evidence that participants attributed knowledge in a counterfeit-object Gettier-type case differently than in a matched case of JTB. In a large-scale, cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri and colleagues’ Experiment 1 ( N = 4,724) using a within-participants design and three vignettes across 19 geopolitical regions, we did find evidence for Gettier intuitions; participants were 1.86 times more likely to attribute knowledge to protagonists in standard cases of JTB than to protagonists in Gettier-type cases. These results suggest that Gettier intuitions may be detectable across different scenarios and cultural contexts. However, the size of the Gettier intuition effect did vary by vignette, and the Turri et al. vignette produced the smallest effect, which was similar in size to that observed in the original study. Differences across vignettes suggest that epistemic intuitions may also depend on contextual factors unrelated to the criteria of knowledge, such as the characteristics of the protagonist being evaluated.

According to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge (JTB), a person can only truly know something if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is justified true belief). This account was challenged by Gettier (1963), who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called Gettier-type cases, wherein a protagonist is justified in believing something to be true but their belief was only correct due to luck. Lay people may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. While some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions (e.g., Machery et al., 2017a), Turri et al. (2015) found that participants attributed knowledge in Gettier-type cases at rates similar to cases of justified true belief. In a large-scale, cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri and colleagues’ (2015) Experiment 1 (N = 4724), we failed to replicate this null result using a within-subjects design and three vignettes across 19 geopolitical regions. Instead, participants demonstrated Gettier intuitions; they were 1.86 times more likely to attribute knowledge to protagonists in standard cases of justified true belief than to protagonists in Gettier-type cases. These results suggest that Gettier intuitions may be common across different scenarios and cultural contexts. When assessing the knowledge of others, lay people may rely on a shared set of epistemic intuitions (i.e., a core folk epistemology) that requires more than simply justification, belief, and truth. However, the size of the Gettier intuition effect did vary by vignette, and the Turri et al. (2015) vignette produced the smallest effect. Thus, epistemic intuitions may also depend on contextual factors unrelated to the criteria of knowledge, such as the characteristics of the protagonist being evaluated.

Global climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic that are among the most pressing societal crises share multiple links. It has been shown for instance, that the measures to fight against the coronavirus may impact (at least for a while) greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the COVID-19 can serve as a prototypical example for climate change, demonstrating how global crises may become personally relevant and certain. Here, our aim was to investigate whether explicit reference to the COVID-19 crisis in communication messages on global climate change could enhance message effectiveness. Through two pre-registered studies (N_total = 651), we examined whether the use of factual elements stressing the certainty dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 1) or the use of arguments linking COVID-19 and climate change framed in terms of “positive” or “negative” outcomes (Study 2) could impact the effectiveness of climate messages. Results did not show that messages aiming to increase the certainty of the climate crisis by linking it to the COVID-19 pandemic increased perceived message effectiveness. However, we have found that emotional framing influenced perceived message effectiveness, but not pro-environmental behaviour. Results are discussed in terms of the impact of the concepts of certainty, message framing and emotions on climate change communication.

Much research on moral judgment is centered on moral dilemmas in which deontological perspectives (i.e., emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with utilitarian judgements (i.e., following the greater good defined through consequences). A central finding of this field Greene et al. showed that psychological and situational factors (e.g., the intent of the agent, or physical contact between the agent and the victim) play an important role in people’s use of deontological versus utilitarian considerations when making moral decisions. As their study was conducted with US samples, our knowledge is limited concerning the universality of this effect, in general, and the impact of culture on the situational and psychological factors of moral judgments, in particular. Here, we empirically test the universality of deontological and utilitarian judgments by replicating Greene et al.’s experiments on a large (N = X,XXX) and diverse (WEIRD and non-WEIRD) sample across the world to explore the influence of culture on moral judgment. The relevance of this exploration to a broad range of policy-making problems is discussed.