The Effect Of Physical Cleanliness In Obsessive Compulsive Washing Individuals On Moral Judgement And Moral Behavior

With the rapid development of the national economy, moral issues have attracted more and more attention. Moral judgments and moral behavior are important parts of morality, which have always been the focus of moral psychology. Therefore, it is necessary to further clarify the mechanism of moral judgment and moral behavior. The rise of the study of embodied cognition in recent years provides a new insight into the inherent mechanism of morality. The study found that the cleaning behavior would have effect to the physical sensation, and this body feeling would have an impact on individual’s moral judgments and moral behavior. But the former researches mostly choose ordinary individuals as subjects, with less consideration of obsessive compulsive individuals. At the same time, whether there is any difference between the different moral domains on the effect of physical cleanliness is rarely reported in China and abroad. What’s more, most of the embodied morality studies are conducted in western countries, whether the "cleanliness next to virtue" effect has a cross-cultural consistency is still worth testing.Therefore, this research is carried out under the background of Chinese culture. We investigate the effect of Physical cleanliness of high and low obsessive compulsive washing individuals on Moral Judgment and Moral Behavior by two experiments. The results are as follows:(1) the physical cleanliness has an significant effect on the moral judgment of high obsessive compulsive washing individuals. Under the condition of physical cleanliness, the score of moral judgment of high obsessive compulsive washing individuals is significantly higher than the control condition. And the score of the moral domain of purity is significantly higher than the moral domain of harm. To the low Obsessive Compulsive washing individuals,The score of moral judgment is not significantly different between the two conditions.(2) the physical cleanliness has an significant effect on the score of pro-social behavior and pro-social intent of high obsessive compulsive washing individuals. Under the condition of physical cleanliness, the score of pro-social intent of high obsessive compulsive washing individuals is significantly lower than the control condition. The number of individuals showing pro-social behavior is less than the control condition. To the low Obsessive Compulsive washing individuals, The score of pro-social behavior and pro-social intent is not significantly different under the two conditions..