For both my MA and MRes dissertations, I investigated how we could overcome bad first impressions following a moral transgression. This was completed under the supervision of Dr Devin Ray, at the University of Aberdeen.

Negative impressions left by immoral actions are difficult to overcome. I compared the ability of various apologies and virtuous actions at overcoming negative impressions resulting from behaving immorally.

Much of the research into moral impression formation focuses on one particular area of morality, such as dishonesty. We used the Moral Foundations Theory to see how impressions varied across a wide range of moral domains.

In short, our findings are rather positive! Both apologies and virtuous acts are consistently effective at improving bad first impressions across most moral foundations.