Moral Hypocrisy: Inter-out Group Effect On Moral Judgment

Moral judgment is a common phenomenon in human society, and also has cultural difference. It has been confirmed that humanity is likely to be the moral hypocrite in varying degrees. There is the discrepancy between the fairness judgment for the same transgression when committed by the self or by the others, which is a transgression behavior enacted by the self or ingroup members were perceived to be more acceptable than the identical transgression behavior enacted by others or outgroup members (Valdesolo & DeSteno,2007,2008). Moral hypocrisy has been conceptualized as individual's ability to hold a belief while acting in discord with it (Batson, Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein, Kampf,& Wilson,1997).However, whether the Chinese people exist moral hypocrisy phenomenon of the inter-out group effect? and whether it implicit represent the moral personality trait? This study focused on three questions as follow:(1) Whether the inter-out group effect on moral trait widely being in Chinese? (2) Do people refer to such moral trait to judgment the morality or immorality when in the material situations? And whether existed moral hypocrisy phenomenon on the material situations of moral judgment? (3) If the group is threatened, will it weaken the inter-out group effect on moral judgment? The results showed that:1. There were significant difference between liberal arts students and science students on the scores of the expression, which described these two groups'moral trait. When rated ingroup and outgroup members whether they had the appropriate moral characters, liberal arts students and science students' ingroup attitude was positive, and regarded the moral evaluation of ingroup higher than outgroup, there was the preference of "ingroup is more moral". However, the two groups assessed the immoral expression of liberal arts students and science students were no significant differences, it means that there existed no "outgroup is more immoral" bias tendency.2. There were no significant effect on different groups' reaction time between the moral trait and immoral trait. Combined with the performance of explicit attitude, it could be find that when assessed of ingroup and outgroup members whether had the appropriate moral characters, people had a prominent explicit attitude to "ingroup is more moral", but the implicit attitude was not obvious; People had the same evaluation to immoral trait both in the explicit and implicit attitude, they did not exist "outgroup is more immoral" implicit bias.3. The evaluation to the fairness and inner conflict of moral behavior in different groups were no significant difference in scores. In explicit attitudes, liberal arts students and science students' judgment of ingroup and outgroup's moral behavior in the material situations did not seem to exist "ingroup is more moral", there was also no significant difference in scores of inner conflict. However, there was significant different in reaction time, which was about the scale and inner conflict of the moral properties between ingroup and outgroup. It showed that, when assess the ingroup and outgroup's moral behavior, there was no "ingroup is more moral" preference in liberal arts students and science students' explicit attitude. But in implicit attitudes, liberal arts students'inner criteria tended to show that ingroup is more moral, and science students did not have this hypocrisy, in their belief, they had an implicit attitude that outgroup were more moral.4. The fairness of ingroup and outgroup's immoral behavior and reaction time between the two groups were extremely significant difference, indicating that, in explicit and implicit attitudes, liberal arts students had preference that "immoral behavior enacted by ingroup can be more acceptable", and "immoral behavior enacted by outgroup is more immoral". However, science students held that "outgroup members' immoral behavior can be more acceptable", and " ingroup members' immoral behavior is more immoral". When evaluate ingroup and outgroup's inner conflict, there was no significant differences on scores, but the inner conflict's reaction time was significant, indicating that, liberal arts students existed "outgroup is more immoral" bias in the implicit attitudes, but science students believed that the moral level of their ingroup might be lower both in their explicit and implicit attitudes.5. Using the introduction to arouse different professional students' group threatened, we found that, even when ingroup's fairness of moral judgment threatened, the moral hypocrisy of liberal arts students were entrenched and difficult to be weakened. Science students remain bias of "outgroup is more moral".6. Science students tended to consider that liberal arts students have higher moral standards, because they had gender stereotypes on liberal arts students, that is, most female were liberal arts students, but science students mostly were male; also, they were more willing to believe that the implementation of immoral behavior most were boys. Therefore, when priming "ingroup moral behavior", "outgroup immoral behavior", they needed more information to process, so the reaction time was longer. But when priming "ingroup immoral behavior", "outgroup moral behavior", they were impressed by this phenomenon, the reaction time was shorter.