The Influence Of Language On Moral Judgment: The Mediating Role Of Psychological Distance And The Moderating Role Of Foreign Language Proficiency

Moral judgment is one of the daily decision-making activities that we all often encounter.With the acceleration of globalization and the development of communication technology,the number of people who are exposed to and learning a second language is increasing.At the same time,more and more people need to make judgments and decisions in the context of a second language.Recently,some studies have found that when the same moral dilemma is presented in different language forms,people’s moral judgments will show differences.Specifically,when moral dilemmas are presented in a foreign language(FL),people are more inclined to support the utilitarian decision-making of giving up one to save five than in their native language(NL).Cipolletti et al.called this phenomenon the moral foreign-language effect(MFLE).Since the discovery of the MFLE,scholars from different countries have carried out researches on it,but the results are not consistent.Some studies have failed to find the MFLE.Meanwhile,those studies that have found this effect are mainly based on the dual-processing theory to explain the mechanism of the MFLE,and came up with two seemingly opposite hypotheses.Therefore,the existence of moral foreign language effect and its mechanism are still controversial.In recent years,the construal-level theory(CLT),as a novel and rapidly developing cognitive theory in social psychology,has been widely used to study multidisciplinary areas like judgment and decision making,consumer behavior,organizational behavior and so on due to its powerful explanatory power.However,up to now,domestic and foreign researchers have barely explored the MFLE based on the CLT.In addition,in the research paradigm of moral judgment,researchers mostly adopt the moral dilemma paradigm or the processing dissociation paradigm.But both of these paradigms have certain limitations.To solve this problem,Gawronski’s team developed a CNI model(consequences,norms,and general preference for inaction versus action irrespective of consequences and norms)based on the Multitree Processing Tree Principle.Many foreign studies have shown that the CNI model can promote the resolution of the remaining controversial issues in the moral field.However,domestic research on the application of the CNI model to explore moral judgments has just started.As of March 2021,only six articles using CNI model to investigate moral judgment in Chinese culture can be found in CNKI database,and there are almost no studies using CNI model to investigate the MFLE.According to above,based on the CLT and using the CNI model as the research material,this study firstly answers the controversial question of whether the MFLE exists or not,and then attempts to explore the possible mechanism of the MFLE.In study 1,196 subjects were recruited for a single factor(language: NL vs.FL)intergroup experiment.Taking the parameters of the moral dilemma paradigm,the processing dissociation paradigm and CNI model as dependent variables,the robustness of the MFLE was investigated,and the cultural applicability of CNI model was also tested.The results show that,compared with NL,participants who made the moral judgment in an FL had a higher ratio of utilitarian judgment,a stronger utilitarian tendency and a weaker deontology tendency,and a lower sensitivity to moral norms.That is to say,the MFLE also exists in Chinese participants whose NL is Chinese and FL is English.In addition,the results also show that CNI model has good measurement validity,and is also suitable for Chinese cultural background.In study 2,204 participants were recruited.Based on the CLT,psychological distance was introduced to explore whether psychological distance played a mediating role in the influence of language on moral judgments.The results show that when the utilitarian judgment ratio is taken as the dependent variable indicator,language can indirectly influence individuals’ moral judgments through the partial mediating effect of psychological distance.Furthermore,when the utilitarian tendency and sensitivity to consequence are used as the dependent variable indicator,the mediating effect of psychological distance is still significant.Specifically,when the language form of moral dilemmas is a FL,the subjects’ perceived psychological distance of dilemmas is distant,their ratio of utilitarian judgment is higher,utilitarian tendency is stronger,and sensitivity to consequence is higher.In study 3,183 subjects were selected to investigate the moderating effect of foreign language proficiency on the above mediation model based on the study 2.The results show that foreign language proficiency moderates the first half of the mediation model,that is,the influence of language on psychological distance.Specifically,for the subjects in the low foreign language proficiency group,language has a significant negative predictive effect on psychological distance;However,for the subjects with high foreign language proficiency,language has no significant effect on the prediction of psychological distance.The results reveal the significant influence of language on moral judgment,and verify the mediating role of psychological distance and the moderating role of foreign language proficiency,which expand the possible explanation of the mechanism of the MFLE.