Differential Bias Among Kinship In Moral Judgment

When we communicate with others, it is inevitable to influence by relatedness. Anecdotal experience suggests that the distance and closeness play a main role in individual adaption and survivalization, and have different impact on human life and cognitive processes.This dissertation mainly investigated the processing characteristics of distance and closeness differences among different kins in implicit attitude, recall level, moral judgment and cognitive intervention through4experiments. The results were as follows:Different intimate degree relatives have different effect on the processing of individual moral judgment. The processing of moral judgment to lineal relatives was significantly larger than the other relatives of low degree of intimacy. This effect not only exists in the early awareness and attention stage, also exists in the late response selection stage. Differetial bias effect on individual relatives has stability, but not on strangers that can be influenced through cognitive intervention. The specific results are as follows:Study1investigated human implicit attitude bias and memory differences to their lineal relatives and closed relatives using the GNAT task. Kinship bias exists in moral implicit attitudes. Compared with uncles, individuals are more likely to contact positive things or properties with parents. In our self-schema, the parents’ moral implicit attitude is more positive than other relatives.Study2investigated the neural mechanisms of moral judgments to lineal relatives, closed relatives and distant relatives using Yes/No judgment paradigm. The results show that, we are insensitive to positive moral judgment relatively, while sensitive to the negative moral judgment and have differential bias to different relatives. That is to say:we are high sensitive to the negative moral information about lineal relatives for their important survival fitness value.Study3further investigated the neural mechanisms of kinship bias in moral dilemmas about lineal relatives, closed relatives and distant relatives. The results show that we also have differential bias to different relatives. Compared with closed relatives and distant relatives, we are more sensitive and pay more attention or cognitive resources to lineal relatives. But this bias only appeared in negative moral judgement for its biological significance; we are inertia in positive moral judgement.Study4further investigated the neural mechanisms of cognitive intervention about differential bias. The results show that, compared with the stranger before cognitive intervention, we are more sensitive to the stranger after cognitive intervention. The moral judgments to outer layer people are easily affected by the intervention of cognition; while inner layer kinship, for its intimacy, have stability.