The Moral Compensation Behavior:the Different Role Of Guilt And Moral Identity

Recent years, close attention has been paid on the theme of moral compensation by increasing psychologists. The moral compensation means that people will have the compensatory tendency of the altruistic behavior when their immoral sense in the self-image is primed by recalling their immoral experience before, by which one can reduce their personal sense of immorality. Although a large amount of studies have shown moral compensation effect, there is no research to probe into its specific mechanism from the perspective of moral emotion and moral identity. The previous relevant literatures indicate that guilt, as a key, plays a crucial role in the moral compensation behavior, meanwhile, moral identity would moderate the process. It will be of high theoretical significance and practical value to clarify the comprehensive psychological mechanism of the moral compensation from the point of moral emotion and moral identity. On the one hand, we can clarify the inherent mechanism from the dimensions of emotion, trait and behavior tendency. On the other hand, the present research will provide good guidance for Chinese Civil construction.Before we discuss how the moral compensation occurs, the emotion born from the priming of immoral event should be estimated, which may well be the guilt from a flood of literature. Therefore, the present research includes two studies. In study one, we clarify the mental structure of the guilt and the guilt emotion scale was made by 438 participants. In study two, based on the existing research, we construct and test our hypothesized moderated mediation models for the moral compensation mechanism, in which guilt mediated the process of immorality-priming affecting compensatory behavior and moral identity moderated the mediated process. With 491 participates engaged in, the study provides support for this hypothesis. The main results are as follows:Firstly, the guilt emotion has a steady individual psychological structure, meanwhile the corresponding scale has good reliability and validity.(1) The guilt emotion is composed of three dimensions, which are self-consciousness for their mistake, emotional experience and behavior tendency respectively.(2) The guilt emotion scale has good reliability and validity. The index from the exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis reach the psychological measurement standard. The coefficients of internal consistency between sub-scale and total scale score range from 0.83 to 0.93. The coefficients of correlation between the sub-scales range from 0.51 to 0.71, and the ones between the sub-scales and the total scale range from 0.79 to 0.90.Secondly, the mechanism of compensatory behaviors provides a moderated mediation model.(1) There are positive relationship between immoral priming, guilt, moral identity and moral compensation.(2) The mechanism of compensatory behaviors provides a moderated mediation model, with immoral priming as the basis, guilt as the mediator, and moral identity as the moderator.The result indicates the different role of the moral emotion and moral trait in the moral compensatory behavior. Therefore, we may lay emphasis on motivating their moral emotion and promoting their identity on the right sense of values, in order to improve the Chinese moral level effectively.