The Influence Of Self-conscious Emotion And Personal Involvement On Moral Judgment

Moral judgment is based on internalized moral principles to judge and judge things as good or bad,right or wrong,and it is the core component of morality.Moral judgment is a complex cognitive activity with complex individual internal cognitiveemotional mechanisms.One of the important cognitive-emotional mechanisms is that the level of personal involvement in moral situations may determine the outcome of moral judgments by affecting emotions.In recent years,many studies have explored the impact of moral judgments in this field.However,few studies have explored how the interaction of different valences of moral emotions and personal involvement affects individuals’ moral judgments.The researchers argue that,as the core factor affecting moral judgment,the discussion of the interaction between moral emotion and personal involvement is helpful to deeply investigate the influence of moral judgment.This study uses college students as subjects.Emotions were induced by video and situational simulation methods,and the effects of pride,guilt,and shame on three selfconscious emotions and personal involvement levels on moral judgment were explored through a moral dilemma situation which implied two levels of self-involvement.The research is divided into two experiments.Experiment 1 studies the influence of positive self-conscious emotion and personal involvement on moral judgment,and experiment 2 studies the influence of negative self-conscious emotion and personal involvement on moral judgment.Combining the results of the two experiments,it is found that(1)the level of personal involvement affects the subjects’ moral judgment tendency.Compared with the low personal involvement,the subjects in the high personal involvement situation are more inclined to make non-utilitarian moral judgments.(2)Positive selfawareness emotion—subjects who experience pride are more inclined to make utilitarian moral judgments,and there is an interaction between pride and personal involvement level on moral judgments.(3)When subjects in the pride group performed the moral judgment task,near-infrared imaging found differences that were not found in the behavioral data.Compared with the subjects in the control group,the subjects in the pride group had significant positive activations in the left frontal polar region,orbital region,inferior frontal gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the stage of high personal involvement in the presentation of situational utilitarian options;Compared with the pride group,the control group had significant negative activation in the left frontal polar region,orbital region,and inferior frontal gyrus during the presentation stage of low personal involvement situational utilitarian options(4)Negative selfconsciousness emotion——There is no significant difference in the impact of shame and guilt on moral judgment.Near-infrared imaging found differences not found in behavioral data.The effects of shame,negative self-awareness,and personal involvement on moral judgment are independent,and there is no interaction effect.