Charities often express altruistic acts as a series of periodic payments (“donate $10 per month”) as opposed to aggregating them over a longer period (“donate $120 per year”). Five experiments (three preregistered, N = 1479) test whether the framing of an altruistic act affects observers' moral judgment of the act and the actor. Observers perceive a donation as less moral (Experiment 1) and the donor to have lower moral character (Experiments 2a & 2b) when altruistic actions are framed in periodic rather than aggregate terms. An aggregate-framed act increases observers' perception of the donors' sacrifice and the perceived magnitude of their help to the beneficiary. Experiment 3 finds that these two factors can explain the effect of framing on moral judgment. However, donors may hold incorrect intuitions about observers' moral judgment. Experiment 4 shows that donors predict that observers' moral judgment would depend on their decision to donate but not on the appeal to which they respond. The results enrich our understanding of the consequences of using periodic framing of donations, a widespread practice in the marketplace.

慈善机构通常将利他行为表现为一系列定期付款（“每月捐赠 10 美元”），而不是在较长时期内进行汇总（“每年捐赠 120 美元”）。五个实验（三个预注册，N = 1479）测试利他行为的框架是否会影响观察者对行为和行为者的道德判断。当利他行为以周期性而非汇总的方式构建时，观察者认为捐赠的道德水平较低（实验 1），捐赠者的道德品质较低（实验 2a 和 2b）。一个综合框架的行为增加了观察者对捐助者牺牲的感知以及他们对受益人的帮助程度的感知。实验3发现这两个因素可以解释框架对道德判断的影响。然而，捐赠者可能对观察者的道德判断持有错误的直觉。实验 4 表明捐赠者预测观察者的道德判断将取决于他们捐赠的决定，而不是他们回应的呼吁。