Moral judgment is an integral part of social living; a ubiquitous phenomenon across time and human cultures. Inherent to this is an uncertainty factor: inferential processes necessitate a component of situational ambiguity, requiring the perceiver to make a best-guess considering the available evidence. While research has demonstrated variability exists in judgments both between situations and within, less is known about how judgments occur under explicit uncertainty. Across a series of 4 studies, I examined whether third party emotional expressivity influences severity judgments of moral transgressions, targeting situations that manifest uncertainty. A pilot study was first implemented to identify stimuli appropriate for moral judgment research. Study 2 and Study 3 examined the influence of facial expressions (angry, disgust, neutral, happy) on moral severity judgments in both clear and uncertain contexts but did not find any effect. Study 4 implemented auditory expressions (angry/neutral crowd sounds) instead of facial expression and found that auditory expressions did influence severity judgments in two instances. Implications and future directions on the function of communicative expressions under situational uncertainty are discussed.
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