Red And Green Metaphors Of Moral Concepts And Their Bidirectional Mapping

Metaphor is not only a linguistic phenomenon,but also an important cognitive function.It is an important way for human beings to understand things and the world.Generally speaking,metaphor means that people use concrete things to describe abstract things with similar characteristics,which makes people understand concepts more simply and clearly.With the rise of embodied cognition research,researchers no longer only focus on the language level of metaphor,but more deeply explore the deep psychological mechanism of metaphor from the cognitive level.Morality is a complex abstract concept.In the study of moral cognition,a large number of metaphors have been found,such as moral space metaphor(moral is in a high position,immoral is in a low position),moral clean metaphor(moral is clean,immoral is dirty),and moral color metaphor(people tend to think that morality is white,immoral is dirty).In the study of moral color metaphor,most researchers choose black and white which are common in our life.Some studies have proved the psychological reality of black and white metaphor in moral concept.However,at present,there is less research on the relationship between other colors and moral concepts,such as red and green.Red often symbolizes red in Chinese culture,such as Spring Festival couplets and lanterns.However,in daily life,we can also see that the red light means to stop,and the red card means to violate the rules.Whether there is a metaphorical connection between colors like these and moral concepts has been less studied.Therefore,three experiments were designed to explore the metaphorical relationship between color and moral concepts.The first experiment explores the psychological reality of moral red and green color metaphor.The response speed of subjects to different color words was investigated by using moral Stroop paradigm.The results show that the subjects’ response to green moral words is less than that of red moral words,and the reaction to red immoral words is less than that of green immoral words.It is proved that there is a specific metaphorical connection between morality and red and green color.Experiment 2 discusses whether different color background will affect the judgment of moral behavior in the moral dilemma story from a more complex level.The results show that the subjects tend to think that the behavior of the characters in the green background is more moral,while the character behavior in the red background is more immoral.The background of different colors has influenced the moral judgment of the same moral dilemma story.Experiment 3 discusses whether the metaphorical mapping between moral concept and color has bidirectional.The results show that: the subjects respond to green faster when the moral concept is started,and whether there is a mapping from the target domain of red and green metaphor to the origin domain of moral concept under the start of moral words(or immoral words).The results show that: the subjects respond to green faster when the moral concept is started;and the red reaction is faster when the immoral concept is started.The results of three experiments show that in the red and green metaphor of moral concept,moral concept has psychological connection with red and green color,and there is not only the mapping from the origin domain to the target domain,but also the mapping from the target domain to the origin domain,that is,the metaphor mapping has the bidirectional characteristics.