Better Incompetent, Than Immoral; No Do-Over For The Immorals!

Testing the Moral Primacy Model in a job interview setting, the researchers found that despite planning to prioritize competence over morality when making a hiring decision, impressions changed more significantly upon receipt of new information about a subject’s immorality, rather than incompetence. Interestingly, when the new information about the subject was positive, they did not find a moral primacy effect.