The Clean Metaphor Of The Moral Concepts And Its Intervention

The metaphor of moral concept emphasizes that there is a metaphorical connection between the original domain,such as up and down,smell,light and shade,cold and hot,and the target domain,such as morality(Cramwinckel,Cramer&Dijke,2013).Among them,the connection between morality and cleanliness has attracted much attention.Studies have found that people tend to think morality is clean(Schnall,Benton,&Harvey,2008).However,some studies have shown that different subjects of cleanliness,such as the environment or themselves,have different influences on moral judgment(Kaspar&Klane,2017).In addition,previous studies mostly used clean and dirty materials,moral and immoral materials(Zhong et al.,2006).Then,can the same metaphorical association effect be obtained if only cleanliness and morality exist?What difference does it make whether cleanliness is directed to the environment or oneself?Moreover,there has not been any intervention research on conceptual metaphor,so what is the intervention effect of moral concept clean metaphor?This study answers the above questions.Experiment 1 used Stroop separation paradigm to explore the psychological reality of moral concept cleansing metaphor,which was divided into environmental and self,recording behavioral and ERP data.In experiment 2,the evaluative conditioning method was used to intervene the moral concept cleansing metaphor to explore the effectiveness of the intervention and its transfer effect on prosocial behavior,also from the perspective of environmental and self.In order to provide a new perspective for educational intervention and moral education.The results are as follows:(1)The environmental cleanliness metaphor of moral concept has psychological reality.When the environmental cleanliness sentence and the moral word are presented successively,the response time of the subjects is the shortest.And it will induce the positive P300(220-320ms)and N400(320～420ms)amplitude.(2)The self-cleansing metaphor of moral concept has psychological reality.When selfcleansing sentences and moral words are presented one after another,the response time of the subjects is the shortest.And it will induce the positive P300 and N400 amplitude.(3)The evaluative conditioning method can effectively interfere with the moral concept of environmental cleansing metaphor.In the experimental group,the response to the association between environmental clean sentences and moral words was significantly faster than that in the pretest,while in the control group,there was no significant difference in the response.The scores of prosocial tendency were not significantly different.(4)The evaluative conditioning method can effectively intervene the self-cleansing metaphor of moral concepts.In the experimental group,the response to self-cleansing sentences associated with moral words was significantly faster than in the pretest,while in the control group,there was no significant difference in the pre-test response.The scores of prosocial tendency in the experimental group were significantly higher than those in the control group.In conclusion,there is a metaphorical connection between environmental cleanliness,selfcleanliness and morality,and evaluative conditioning can effectively interfere with moral conceptual cleansing metaphors,which enriches the conceptual metaphor theory and its intervention research,and provides an empirical basis for educational intervention.