Who Keeps Company With The Wolf Will Learn To Howl:the Impact Of Immoral Contagion On Moral Judgment

Morality is a fundamental component of human cultures. Moral judgment is the focus of moral psychology all the while. At the contemporary era, studies of moral judgment involving metaphor and embodied cognition spring up, revealing the psychological association about specific physical experience and abstract social experience (Li Honghan&Xu Chuang,2012). In recent years, the researches of the embodied morality involved visual sense (Banerjee, Chatterjee,&Sinha,2012), auditory sense (Seidel&Prinz,2013), gustatory sense (Hellmann, Thoben,&Echterhoff,2013), olfactory sense (Schnall, Haidt, Clore,&Jordan,2008) and other sensory-perception. The academic research results showed that the connection of multi-channel status information and the high-level cognition is closely. Myers(2007) pointed out that tactile sense may be the earliest feeling we developed to, and the recent study found that contact made some difference on moral contagion(Eskine, Novreske,&Richards,2013).In fact, as the commonplace of psychological contagion people experienced every day, such as blame (Fast&Tiedens,2010), guilt (Gino, Gu,&Zhong,2009), and happiness (Fowler&Christakis,2008) and so on could be spread in interpersonal encounters. Other than the interpersonal infection what we take for granted, the interaction between objects and person can transfer their properties. For example, people disliked the sugars labeled as "cyanide" which were pasted by themselves (Rozin, Millman,&Nemeroff,1986) and held reluctance to wear sweaters previously worn (but washed) by people with moral stain (Rozin, Markwith,&McCauley,1994). This effect was based on the theory of "magical thinking", which means people believed that essence can be transmitted between human and objects (Rozin&Nemeroff,1990).Nowadays, Eskine et al.(2013) found that after the indirect contact (sharing a chair) and direct contact (shaking hands) with a moral transgressor, people experienced more state guilt, indicating moral contagion exists. Presumably, when the individuals contact with items immoral, the properties will spread and they should experience immoral emotions, In addition, research discovered that disgust and morality were strongly linked (karlicki, Hoegg, Aquino,&Nadisic,2013; Sherman, Haidt,&Clore,2012). And the exact relationship between immoral contagion and disgust should be explored further. Moreover, studies showed that compared to other parts of body, washing hands enabled eliminating individuals’immoral emotional experience, and affecting their evaluation of ethical issues (Schnall, Benton,&Harvey,2008; Lee&Schwarz,2010). Accordingly, this study will conduct hands’physical cleansing after moral contagion, and explore whether it can alleviate the effects of moral contagion, then influencing subsequent moral judgments.Now therefore, this study adopts research paradigm of Eskine et al.(2013) within the framework of embodied cognition, examines the effects of moral judgment when individual exposures to the object associated with immoral students. Three experiments were designed. In experiment1, we asked the subjects to wear immoral clothes, ascertaining whether the properties could be affected among individuals, as well as the contagion of immoral nature would impact moral judgments. The second experiment employed a similar paradigm to experiment1, subjects were asked to wear a glove used by transgressor, to probe whether the contagion of properties would evoke individuals’disgust and the need to avoid harm, and explore their relationship with moral judgment. Experiment3was based on the experiment2, all the subjects were asked to wear a glove related to transgressor, then explore if unpleasant experience by contacting with immoral glove would be removed after physical cleaning.The results showed that:(1)There is a significant difference on moral emotion between subjects who were wearing transgressor’s clothing and subjects who were in control group. Compared to the control group, the experimental group experiences more strongly negative moral emotions (guilt&disgust), indicating immoral properties can be transmitted through contact.(2)There is a significant difference on moral judgment between subjects who were wearing transgressor’s clothing and subjects who were in control group. Compared to the control group, the experimental group would trend to make polarized moral judgment. That means the moral dilemmas and unethical behavior are evaluated more immoral.(3) Wearing transgressor’s clothing can effectively arouse the subjects’mental contamination, compared to the control group, the mental contamination of the group wearing transgressor’s clothing is more strongly.(4)Wearing transgressor’s clothing can effectively arouse the subjects’need to avoid harm, compared to the control group, the need to avoid harm of the group wearing transgressor’s clothing is more strongly.(5) Disgust takes the full mediating effect between the moral contagion and moral judgment.(6) Cessation of exposure to clothing associated with a transgressor does not eliminate the contagion, but the physical cleaning can reduce disgust emotion and result in more severe moral judgment.