Rajen A Anderson

Biographic Data

ID4233454
NAMERajen A Anderson
GIVEN NAMESRajen A
FAMILY NAMEAnderson
SIGNATUREANDERSON R A
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Leeds
ORCID0000-0002-6285-8358
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS9
TOTAL CITATIONS2
WORKS AS AUTHOR9
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2021
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX1

  • Praise Is for Actions That Are Neither Expected nor Required

    Open AccessRajen A Anderson, Shaun Nichol et al.ARTICLEPersonality and Social Psychology…2026

    In six studies, we examined two foundational questions about moral praise. First, what makes an action praiseworthy? In Study 1, participants reported that actions that exceed duties (compared with dutiful actions) deserve greater praise and are perceived as less likely to happen. Second, what do observers infer from praise? Praise may communicate information about local norms. In Study 2, we found that—in general—participants expect praise to in…

  • Is an eye truly for an eye? Magnitude differences affect moral praise more than moral blame

    Open AccessLishi Tan, Rajen A Anderson et al.ARTICLECognition2025

    Does the amount of perceived moral responsibility correspond to the magnitude of the act to the same degree regardless of whether the act is moral or immoral? In four experiments (N = 1617; all preregistered), we found that-when evaluating two agents who performed similar acts but with different magnitude-observers judged greater differences in their moral responsibility when those acts were moral than when they were immoral. That is, the same di…

  • Asymmetric polarization

    Krishnan Nair, Rajen A Anderson et al.ARTICLEJournal of Personality and Social…2025

    Given growing political polarization in recent years, partisan dislike-defined as the negativity that individuals display at the prospect of having close social relations with supporters of the other party-has received increasing attention. While traditional work in social and political psychology has held that conservatives display greater outgroup hostility than liberals, the worldview conflict perspective suggests that both groups similarly ex…

  • Slippery slope thinking links religiosity to punishment

    Open AccessRajen A Anderson, Benjamin C Ruisch et al.ARTICLEJournal of Experimental Social…2025References: 7

  • People judge third-party anger as a signal of moral character

    Open AccessXi Shen, Rajen A Anderson et al.ARTICLEJournal of Experimental Social…2025References: 7

  • On the Highway to Hell

    Open AccessRajen A Anderson, Benjamin C Ruisch et al.ARTICLEPersonality and Social Psychology…2024

    Across four studies, we test the hypothesis that people exhibit “slippery slope” thinking in their judgments of moral character—that is, do observers judge that a person who behaves immorally will become increasingly immoral over time? In Study 1, we find that a person who commits an immoral act is judged as more likely to behave immorally and as having a worse character in the future than in the past. In Study 2, we find that it is the commissio…

  • Development of beliefs about censorship

    Open AccessRajen A Anderson, Isobel A Heck et al.ARTICLECognition2023

  • “False positive” emotions, responsibility, and moral character

    Open AccessRajen A Anderson, Rachana Kamtekar et al.ARTICLECognition2021

  • A matter of taste

    Open AccessBenjamin C Ruisch, Rajen A Anderson et al.ARTICLEJournal of Personality and Social…2021Cited by: 2

    1,639) we test this hypothesis and find robust support for this association. In Studies 1-3, we find that sensitivity to the chemicals PROP and PTC-2 well established measures of taste sensitivity-are associated with greater political conservatism. In Study 4, we find that fungiform papilla density, a proxy for taste bud density, also predicts greater conservatism, and that this association is partially statistically mediated by disgust sensitivi…