Fatigue compatibilism: Lay perceivers believe that fatigue predicts—but does not excuse—moral failings

Abstract

Past work suggests that fatigue reduces prosociality, but it remains unclear whether lay perceivers account for fatigue when judging moral character. The current work presents six studies suggesting that people operate as fatigue compatibilists: Perceivers expected fatigued actors to help less than refreshed actors, and they rated non-helpers as more fatigued than their refreshed counterparts, but perceivers ignored fatigue when evaluating moral character. Instead, ratings of actor morality hinged on whether actors helped or not, regardless of actor fatigue. Findings held for a variety of dependent measures, across student and online samples, for within- and between-subjects designs, regardless of lay willpower beliefs, for both prescribed and proscribed actions, and for both mundane and extreme levels of helping and fatigue. These findings suggest that lay perceivers surmise that fatigue reduces actors’ likelihood of acting prosocially, but they interpret fatigue as an insufficient reason for moral failings.