When Morality Hurts: Moral Evaluations and the Social Perception of Intimate Partner Violence (and Beyond)

Morality emerges as a prominent evaluative dimension in social perception and judgment. In the last two decades, scholars highlighted its regulatory function in interpersonal, intragroup and intergroup processes. In the present paper, we aim to bridge literature on the centrality of morality in social judgment and the literature on laypeople's reactions to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), a leading problem of public health. By integrating these perspectives and taking a bystander approach, we aim to demonstrate that social perception of IPV—and the subsequent reactions to it—are fundamentally rooted in moral evaluations of the victim. We further present the practical implications of this theoretical account of the factors that drive bystanders' reactions to IPV, including the need to address moral biases in public awareness campaigns and policy interventions.