The Impacts Of Moral Self-Regulation On College Students’ Donor Behavior: The Effect Of Others With Different Psychological Distance Involvement

The moral behavior mechanism has always been focal point of psychology. The related studies want to figure out how people make moral decisions and deductions, and then explore the factors which can affect the moral behavior. As an important part of moral behavior, the donor behavior receives much concern all the time. Recent years, with the better theory and technology, psychologists start to explore the psychological and neural mechanisms of morality, including the moral judgment, moral emotions, moral disengagement, moral identity, moral self-regulation, and so on. And moral self-regulation is one of the most important parts. Meanwhile, psychological distance is another key influencing factor. People are usually more tolerant and friendly to others with closer psychological distance. Previous studies discuss individual donor behavior from the view of moral self-regulation or psychological distance separately, and they never consider their interaction. Therefore, by using Moral Identity Measure, Moral Self-regulation Priming and Donor Situational Stories, this study try to discuss the effects of moral self-regulation on college students’ donor behavior from three different psychological distance views. Study 1 is 2 (Ideal Moral Self-image:high vs low) x 3 (Moral Self-regulation Priming:positive vs negative vs neuter) x 2 (Psychological Distance:familiar vs stranger) mixed design and tries to discuss how moral self-regulation effects college students’ donor behavior—comparison of familiar and stranger. And in study 2, familiar is particularly separated into confidant and acquaintance; in study 3, stranger is particularly separated into similar others and dissimilar others. These two studies research by the same method. The conclusions are as follows:(1) Under condition of positive priming, the high ideal moral self-image participants’donate desire has been effected by positive feedback mechanism; while under condition of negative priming, the high ideal moral self-image participants’ donate desire has been effected by negative feedback mechanism, and the moral cleansing effect has been observed;(2) The effect of others with different psychological distance involvement has been found on college students’ donor behavior, and college students prefer to donate to familiar, confidant and similar others;(3) The motive of college students’donor behavior is mainly based on results instead of rules, and compared with stranger and acquaintance, college students donate more to familiar and confidant; and this result isn’t confirmed while donate to dissimilar others.These conclusions not only enrich the content of moral behavior, offer theory evidence to raising college students’ moral level, but also have reference value to improve college students’ moral behavior.