Money Concept Priming Effect On Moral Judgment

Money has been playing crucial part in human’s life in the form of special value since merchandise come up. Along with the development of social-economy, money brings great influence on people’s behavior and mind, but also arouse the desire of money. In the society of money orientatation, will the moral level be improve with the economic condition turns out better while people are pursuing the benefit need? Will the moral judgement be harsher when judge the behavior that will bring benefit with hurting others?The psychological effect of money now is one of the hot spot in social psychology, produce a series of influential findings. Among them, self-sufficiency theory and social resource theory attracts the most attention. In Self-sufficient theory, money concept priming can lead to a state of self-sufficiency, which will induce two motivation:one is autonomous motivation which is driven by the individual pursue freedom and effectively help in achieving personal goals, another is alienated motivation,because occupied in the world of the ego, the individual is not sensitive to others’feelings, and alienated from others. In social resources theory, money can make people control the social system, it makes people obtain what they want from the social system, in this sense, money, as a kind of resources, could replace each other with social support. Moral judgment refers to activities that judge another individual or groups’behavior and events with moral value according according with the code of ethics or values in essence, moral judgement is a psychological process, which is individual self-consciousness show and performance.So far, research have done a lot on moral judgement. However, rarely Chinese researcher have studied money and moral judgement using money concept-prime technique. In order to complement the research, this paper adopt money-prime technique to exam money’s impact on moral judgement based on self-sufficiency theory and social resource theory which would contributes to the growing body of money psychology and fair construct.Using two experiments, this paper aims at disclosing the relationship between money concept-prime and moral judgement. Experiment1using descrambling task to prime money concept and create a baseline, to exam money concept prime’s influence on the sense of judgment in different conflict level of ethical dilemmas; Experiment2ask participants to recall a past experience to manipulate the sense of time distance, and Examine whether the perspective of moral events in different time is the same, thus probe money concept-prime on the influence of judgement of in time distance. The study shows:1. Compared to neutral concept prime, participants in money concept prime take more utilitarian judgment In high conflict level ethical dilemmas.2. In lower conflict level ethical dilemma, there is no obvious difference in moral judgment between money concept prime and neutral concept prime.3.Compared to neutral concept prime, participants in money concept prime take more utilitarian judgment under ethical dilemma in near time distance, Under ethical dilemma in far time distance, participants in money concept prime would reduce utilitarian judgment,compared with ethical dilemma in near time distance.4.No matter ethical dilemma events occurred near or far, participants in neutral concept prime tend to take deontological judgment.The study indicates there is potential influence between money concept priming and moral judgement. Money concept priming result in more utilitarian judgment. Moreover, following with ethical dilemma in different time distance, the rigor judgement standard is different. Far time distance (one year ago) has effect on people’s perspective of events, that result in reducing utilitarian judgement between outcome first and complying with rule.This study explores the psychological effect of money, also reveals the link between money concept priming and moral judgment, providing self-sufficiency theory and social resource theory with new evidence. Future study should aim at whether different economic status individuals with implicit attitude towards money could affect the more judgement of in the ethical dilemma worth exploring.