The Effect Of Temporal Distance On The Moral Judging And Moral Behavior

Construal Level Theory has developed from Temporal Construal Theory. Temporal Construal Theory was proposed by Liberman & Trope in 1998 in which they suggested that temporal distance is one type of psychological distance, which influenced the construal level of individual's cognition and affected resultant other cognition and behaviors. Liberman et al. later in 2007 extended the psychological distances from temporal distance to other three types and formed Construal Level Theory, suggesting that temporal distance, special distance, social distance, and hypotheticality are psychological distances which all influenced the construal level of individual's cognition. Construal Level Theory proposed that greater distance of the four psychological distance the higher level of individual's construal and on the higher level of construal people construe things and events in more abstract, decontextualized way and emphasize desirability other than feasibility. At the same time, high level construal had more weight on the distant temporal preference, behavior intentions, and so on.As Construal Level Theory was applied in the moral field, Eyal, Liberman, Trope (2008)found in the research that contrast to the near psychological behaviors the behaviors of distant psychological distance were judged more extreme that immoral behaviors such as one's dead dog and as cleaning one's house with national flag were judged more immoral and moral behaviors such as adopting were judged a disabled child and as a fashion company donating clothes to the poor more desirable.On the basis of testing the results of Eyal, Liberman, Trope (2008), this research extended the field from moral judging to common moral behavior (intention of helping others) and one type of special moral behavioral which was academic moral behavioral (academic faking behavioral intention). The results of three studies showed that: (1) Temporal distance affected people's moral judging and the frame of Construal Level Theory on moral field suitable to Chinese culture.(2) Temporal distance affected people's moral behavior, on the contrast of near temporal perspective, people in the distant temporal perspective had stronger helping behavioral intention.(3) There was moderating effect of temporal distance on the correspondence between academic value judging and academic faking behavioral intention, that is there was greater correspondence between academic value judging and academic faking behavioral intention in the distant future than in the near future...