Cost and Closeness Define Caring

People tend to judge prosocial acts similarly as 'nice' or 'kind,' but reserve the label 'caring' for actions that are costly to the giver or directed to someone they know. An experiment with 736 U.S. participants reading vignettes found motive/expectation mattered less than planning, warmth, personal cost, and relational closeness when labeling behavior as caring. — This reframes public debates about performative virtue and moral signaling: policy or activism that increases visible cost or that emphasizes relationship may be perceived as more genuinely caring and therefore more effective.