Underdogs Moral Superiority Effect In Unethical Situations And Its Influencing Factors

As information developed in the modern society, we are able to learn about hot social eventsin the first time through a variety of information channels. As we can see that discussion on thenegative news involving rich and powerful people of high social status is much more intense thanthose of ordinary people, and the condemnation is also much more strongly. When the conflictinvolves two groups of different social status, such as urban management and vendors, people tendto think that the topdogs are the culprit of the event who oppressing the underdogs. Research onunderdog effect shows that the identity of the weak can bring more social support. However,studies of the underdog effect did not extend to negative social events, especially moral judgmenton unethical behavior of the weak. Although the social code of ethics is fixed, one’s subjectivemoral standard is influenced by many factors and always changing. Will sympathy for the weakaffect the moral judgment on their unethical behavior? And can unethical behavior of the weak beforgiven much more easily compared to people with high-status?This study further study the underdog effect in the negative social events and its influencingfactors under the background of immoral events. The underdogs and updogs were respectivelyused as the main character in two materials of research one, describing their immoral behavior in aclass campaign. Participants were asked to rate on their degree of unethical behavior and revengemotivation, and exploring the differences on moral cognition and forgiveness tendency betweenthe underdogs and updogs. Study two mainly discussed the influencing factors of underdogs moralsuperiority effect, which included two experiments. Experiment one studied the influence ofbehavior directivity on moral superiority effect. Experiment Two put emphasis on scene pressureand the impact of discussed behavior motive on moral superiority effect.The results show that（:1）In undesirable social events like vicious competition, the underdogstend to get support from the people in the first place, which we termed as underdogs moralsuperiority effect. Even in the case of apparently making unethical behavior, moral condemnationto the underdogs is lighter and their behavior is more easier to be forgiven.（2）Underdogs moral superiority effect affected by the behavior directivity. When notconcerning to their own interests, people will unconditionally support the vulnerable, and forgive their behavior easily; but once in relation to their own interests, people will condemn the underdogsas strongly as updogs, and hard to forgive their behavior.（3）Underdogs moral superiority effect affected by behavior motive, which can make anidentity transformation between the underdogs and updogs. Once people feel the underdog’sbehavior is malicious, they will be regarded as updogs, leading to disappearing underdogs moralsuperiority effect; Similarly, if people feel the behavior motive of updogs is harmless or forced,more moral forgiveness will be given to them.