The Effect Of Automated Processing On Moral Hypocrisy: The Role Of Negative Emotions

Moral hypocrisy is a universal moral phenomenon,which has attracted the attention of the society since it was put forward.It includes two levels.Among them,individual hypocrisy is manifested as "inconsistent words and deeds",that is,claims to be moral,but the actual behavior is immoral;Interpersonal hypocrisy is the "double standard" for different actors,holding loose moral standards for oneself but demanding strict moral standards for others.As a typical moral violation,moral hypocrisy is not conducive to the establishment of trust and universal moral concept.Based on the double processing theory,researchers believe that intuitive processing is an important factor to inhibit moral hypocrisy.In the process of intuitive processing,individuals tend to make consistent choices,so as to inhibit moral hypocrisy.However,the two processing methods that consume the cognitive resources of the individual and promote the individual to be in the state of intuitive processing get inconsistent results.The research on manipulating cognitive load to make individuals in the state of intuitive processing found that the intuitive processing caused by high cognitive load would reduce the moral hypocrisy of individuals.Studies on manipulating ego loss to put individuals in a state of intuitive processing have found that high ego loss will increase moral hypocrisy of individuals.Therefore,in view of this contradictory result,the current research aims to explore the internal reasons why different intuitionistic processing methods produce inconsistent results on moral hypocrisy.This study consists of two studies(four experiments),using the modified positive task assignment paradigm and the moral situation paradigm to measure moral hypocrisy,in order to clarify the influence of cognitive load and ego depletion on moral hypocrisy and its internal mechanism.Of these,Study 1 consisted of two experiments,and Experiment 1A examined intuitive processing in both ways(control vs.Cognitive Load vs.ego depletion)on interpersonal moral hypocrisy.The results showed that,compared with the control group,the degree of moral hypocrisy of the cognitive load group was significantly reduced,and the degree of hypocrisy of the ego loss group was significantly increased.Previous studies believed that the difference between ego depletion and cognitive load was that ego depletion would cause negative emotions while cognitive load would not cause negative emotions.Based on experiment 1A,experiment 1B adopted 2(emotion type: negative vs.neutral)*3(control vs.Cognitive load vs.ego depletion)intersubject design to explore the role of negative emotions in the influence of intuitive processing styles on moral hypocrisy.The results showed that cognitive load and ego loss significantly increased the degree of interpersonal moral hypocrisy under the condition of negative emotions.In the neutral condition,cognitive load decreased the level of interpersonal moral hypocrisy,and ego depletion increased the level of interpersonal moral hypocrisy.In order to further explore the scope of the influence of intuitive processing methods on moral hypocrisy,study 2 explores the influence of different types of intuitive processing methods on moral hypocrisy at the individual level.Study two consisted of two experiments.In experiment 2A,a single-factor intersubject design(control group vs.cognitive load vs.ego depletion)was used to measure moral hypocrisy using the positive task assignment paradigm,and the influence of different intuitive processing methods on personal moral hypocrisy was explored.The results are consistent with experiment 1A.Compared with the control group,the degree of personal moral hypocrisy of the cognitive load group was significantly reduced,and the degree of hypocrisy of the ego loss group was significantly increased.In experiment 2B,2(emotion type: negative vs.neutral)*3(control vs.Cognitive load vs.ego depletion)intersubject design to explore the role of negative emotions in the impact of intuitive processing styles on individual-level moral hypocrisy.The results showed that,compared with the control group,there was no significant difference between the cognitive load group and the ego depletion group under the negative emotion condition.Under neutral emotion condition,cognitive load reduces individual moral hypocrisy,while ego depletion increases individual moral hypocrisy.This study draws the following conclusions:The reason why this intuitive processing mode of ego depletion leads to stronger moral hypocrisy may not be caused by the consumption of cognitive resources,but by negative emotions.Conversely,the intuitive processing of cognitive load that does not trigger negative emotions reduces moral hypocrisy.This further supports the dual processing theory that intuitive processing can inhibit moral hypocrisy.