The Vertical Spatial Metaphor Of Moral Concept And Its Influence On Moral Judgment

In our lives,when people cannot express and understand the concepts of strange,and intangible,they will use the concept of familiar,concrete and vivid instead,which is the origin of metaphor.In essence,metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon,but also a growing cognitive style,which is closely related to people's daily expression.And moral concept is a kind of more advanced social cognition and the abstract for specific functions by means of metaphor can help us better use this kind of concept,will affect our moral feelings and behavior decision-making process.This study bases on summarizing relevant theories including conceptual metaphors,embodied cognitive and moral judgement,screening relevant empirical studies of moral metaphors,analyzing the divergences and deficiencies in the research field of vertical space metaphor of moral concepts,putting forward three hypothesis.There are three experiments to explore the effect of vertical space metaphor of moral concepts at the conscious level,the affect of vertical space metaphor on moral concepts at the unconscious level,and the influence of vertical space metaphor on moral judgment.The first experiment is to verify the psychological reality of the vertical space of moral concept at the level of consciousness through the forced selection method.The second experiment explores whether the internal mapping mechanism of the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concept contains the process of automation through the stroop effect experiment of lexical classification.Based on experiment one and two,the third experiment further discusses the influence of vertical spatial metaphor on more complex moral judgment.Through the above three experiments,we get the following results:First,the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concept has psychological reality at the level of consciousness.In particular,people consciously think that morality is up and immorality is down.Secondly,the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concept also has psychological reality at the unconscious level.In particular,people will automatically understand the concept of morality through vertical and vertical directions even when people are not aware of it.Specifically,when the matching effect is consistent(the moral word appears above or unethically presented below),the participants react faster to the words presented.Conversely,when the matching effect is inconsistent(the moral word appears below or the immoral word appears above),The subjects respond more slowly to the words presented.Thirdly,the vertical spatial metaphor effect also exists in the complex cognitive process of moral judgment.The influence of the subjects on the individual moral judgment is consistent with the metaphorical direction of the upper azimuth,which will lead to the deviation of the individual's moral judgment towards the more moral direction.Under the background of the lower azimuth,the influence of the subjects on the individual moral judgment is consistent with the metaphorical direction of the lower orientation,which is that the individual?s moral judgment will be shifted in the direction of more immoral.