The Effect Of A Clean Self On Moral Hypocrisy

Moral hypocrisy refers to both the interpersonal discrepancy between the acceptability of one’s own moral transgression and the same one committed by others, and the intrapersonal discrepancy between what individuals think is moral and how they actually behave. As a part of moral judgment’s domain, it absorbs the latest research achievements of moral judgments, such as dual-process model to enrich itself. Conceptual metaphor of moral as a mapping from physical character to psychological sense, which gets a large of studies. These studies involve thermal metaphor, smell metaphor, taste metaphor, spatial metaphor, clean metaphor and so on, which affects the individual’s moral judgment and moral behavior. A researcher found that the metaphor "cleanliness is next to godliness" widely exists in moral judgment, a clean self enhances one’s moral self image and can render harsh moral judgment. But not yet researchers to explore moral hypocrisy from a perspective of metaphor, and no researcher examine if a clean self have a effect on moral hypocrisy. What’s more, most of the moral hypocrisy studies are conducted in western countries.Therefore, this research under the background of Chinese culture for two studies, Study1combined embodied cognition priming and interpersonal moral hypocrisy paradigm. We investigate whether a clean self could elicited an individual’s moral and immoral behavior to self and others with a double standard, respectively. Study2combined embodied cognition priming and individual level of moral hypocrisy paradigm (simulation charity mission and the experimenter for help), We investigate whether a clean self could elicited individuals’ pro-social behavior and pro-social intent have a large discrepancy. The results show that:(1) in three kinds of priming conditions, there has a discrepancy between the acceptability of one’s own moral transgression and the same one committed by others. But under the condition of cleanliness priming, faced to the unethical behavior in moral judgment of themselves and others, the subjects will be scored by lowering the fairness of unethical behavior of others, to increase the moral hypocrisy; under the condition of cleanliness priming, faced to the moral behavior in moral judgment of themselves and others, the subjects will be through ascension to the fairness of their moral behavior score, to increase the moral hypocrisy. This suggests that a clean self can increase the interpersonal level of moral hypocrisy;(2) in three kinds of priming conditions, there has a duplicity between pro-social behavior and pro-social intent. But under the condition of cleanliness priming of subjects, they will be through raising their pro-social intent, to increase the moral hypocrisy. This suggests that a clean self will increase the individual level of moral hypocrisy.The results show a clean self could increase moral hypocrisy, at the same time these studies have verified the phenomenon of moral hypocrisy with cross-cultural consistency.