Research On The Meaning Violation And Fluid Compensation Of Meaning:The Affirmation Of Moral Beliefs

As Meaning Maintenance Model(MMM)claimed,when confronted with a conflict between perserived experiences and their expectations to events,individuals would experience meaning violation.In order to relieve meaning violation,individuals would be motivated to take some self-regulatory strategies.Drawing on the affirmation effect of fluid compensation in the moral domain,with four studies,this research explored the affirmation effect of moral beliefs induced by meaning violation and the possible psychological mechanism undertying this effect.Study 1 contained two experiments,which explored the affirmation effect of moral beliefs induced by meaning violation.Experiment 1 investigated the effect of meaning threat on the severity of moral judgment and the willingness to comply with moral virtuals,Experiment 1 supported that participants under meaning violation showed motivated affirmation of moral beliefs affirmation,including a more positive attitude toward moral behaviors while a more negative attitude to immoral behaviors.They also showed more willingness to abide by moral norms.Experiment 2 explored the effect of meaning violation on affirmation behavior of another moral belief construal—moral regard,examining the breadth and depth of moral regard.Experiment 2 reveaded that for participants in the meaning violation condition,the depth of moral regard was significantly improved,compared to the control condition.Study 2 had one experiment(Experiment 3),with a 2×2×2 between-subject design,to explore the moderating effect of committed moral beliefs on the relationship between meaning violation and the affirmation of moral beliefs.This experiment used five moral dilemmas involving the conflicts between two moral foundations("Care/Harm" vs."Fairness/Cheating").Experiment 3 found that,participants with a high level of identification with the "Care/Harm" moral foundation but a low level of identification with the "Fairness/Cheating" moral foundation,were more likely to make moral judgments based on "Care/Harm" in the meaning violation condition compared with the control condition.On the other hand,participants condition with higher level of identification with the "Fairness/Cheating" moral foundation but lower level of identification with the "Care/Harm" moral foundation,were more inclined to make moral judgments based on "Fairness/Cheating" in the meaning violation than those in the control condition.Study 3 contained one experiment(Experiment 4),which attempted to explore the mediating role of the meaning maintenance motivation in meaning violation's prediction to affirmation effect of moral beliefs.Experimental 4 revealed that participants with meaning violation had a more rapid and harsh evaluation of target behavior from the moral perspective,compared to the personal(non-moral)perspective.Meanwhile,the motivation of meaning maintenance played a mediating role in the relationship between meaning violation and affirmation effect of moral beliefs.Meaning violation led to a higher level of meaning maintenance motivation,which then resulted in the affirmation effect of moral beliefs in the subsequent behavior evaluation task.According to the above-mentioned four studies,the present research suggested that meaning violation resulted in affirmation effect of moral beliefs in order to realize fluid compensation,which was moderated by individuals' committed moral beliefs,and was mediated by meaning maintenance motivation.The significance and limitations of this research as well as future directions were also discussed.