We are all saints and sinners: Some of our actions benefit others, while other actions lead to harm. How do people balance moral rights against moral wrongs when evaluating others' actions? Across 9 studies, we contrast the predictions of three conceptions of intuitive morality—outcome-based (utilitarian), act-based (deontologist), and person-based (virtue ethics) approaches. These experiments establish four principles: Partial offsetting (good acts can partly offset bad acts), diminishing sensitivity (the extent of the good act has minimal impact on its offsetting power), temporal asymmetry (good acts are more praiseworthy when they come after harms), and act congruency (good acts are more praiseworthy to the extent they offset a similar harm). These principles are difficult to square with utilitarian or deontological approaches, but sit well within person-based approaches to moral psychology. Inferences about personal character mediated many of these effects (Studies 1–4), explained differences across items and across individuals (Studies 5–6), and could be manipulated to produce downstream consequences on blame (Studies 7–9); however, there was some evidence for more modest roles of utilitarian and deontological processing too. These findings contribute to conversations about moral psychology and person perception, and may have policy and marketing implications.

我们都是圣人和罪人：我们的某些行为使他人受益，而其他行为则导致伤害。人们在评估他人的行为时如何在道德权利与道德错误之间取得平衡？在9项研究中，我们对比了直觉道德的三种概念的预测：基于结果的（功利主义），基于行为的（义务医师）和基于人的（道德伦理）方法。这些实验建立了四个原理：部分抵消（好的行为可以部分抵消不良行为），灵敏度降低（好的行为的程度对其抵消能力的影响最小），时间上的不对称性（好的行为在受到伤害之后更值得称赞） ，并采取一致行动（在抵消相似伤害的范围内，良好行为值得称赞）。这些原则很难与功利主义或道义主义方法相提并论，但是在以人为本的道德心理学方法中却占有一席之地。关于个人品格的推论介导了许多这样的影响（研究1-4），解释了项目之间和个体之间的差异（研究5-6），并且可以被操纵以产生责备的下游后果（研究7-9）；但是，也有一些证据表明功利性和道义性处理的作用也更为适度。这些发现有助于进行有关道德心理学和人的认知的对话，并且可能具有政策和营销意义。