For example, some athletes report that they play better when the spectators encourage them—and in some cases referees' decisions may be influenced by a partisan crowd.
One is the term "moral", which is defined as partaking in actions considered ethical or proper, and being the distinction between "right" and "wrong" (APA Dictionary [1]).
There is no formal definition of the term "moral support" in the psychological literature, nor is there a formalised or operationalised way to measure it.
These topics, themes and definitions, although not named as such, would amount to a direct acknowledgment of the existence of moral support.
From an early age, humans are able to intuitively identify a morally charged situation from a more mundane one, as explained by Social Domain Theory (Turiel 1983 [6]).
Moral support can come in the form of influence by norms and role models (Aquino and Freeman [7]).
Furthermore, the Social Information Processing (Crick and Dodge, 1994 [8]) in conjunction with Moral Decision-Making Framework (Garrigan, Adlam, Langdon 2018 [9]) shows how in a morally charged situation, a proximal decision is made by following a set of internalised cues, before a behaviour in enacted.
The framework shows how these internal cues take into consideration social factors, most notably peer interaction, parenting and culture.
Consumers often use guilt management strategie to permit contradictory behaviour (Gregory-Smtih, Smith, Winklhofer 2013 [11]).
The guilt is felt when the person feels they have substantially ruptured their morals, by doing the "wrong" thing and making the purchase.
The Lowe and Haws study demonstrates that moral support is a highly social and emotional phenomenon.
A study conducted by Pfund et al. [12] (2020) found sending a motivational letter to patients needing psychological treatment for gambling disorders increased the rate of first therapy session attendance.