Effects Of Pleasure,Disgust And Personal Involvement On Moral Judgment

Moral judgment has been the focus of moral psychology research. Methods and theories of moral judgment research are becoming increasingly reasonable and perfect in terms of philosophical speculation or psychological empirical studies. From Piaget to Kohlberg, rational theory of moral judgment has been the mainstream of moral judgment research, their theories and research methods still having a greater impact on researchers at present. With deeper research, it was discovered that emotion also plays an important role in moral judgment, in addition to cognitive reasoning. Based on the research, such people as Hyde, Linde and Grenada put forward their own moral judgment theories which make people have a deeper and more and more objective understanding of moral judgment. However, these studies have following disadvantages:Firstly, different researchers have different conclusions; there is still no final conclusion on the matter of effects of emotional arousal or personal involvement on moral judgment. Secondly, previous studies are mostly under the western cultural context with foreigners as participants, thus whether the findings apply to Chinese cultural background or not needs further verification and explorations. Thirdly, previous researchers generally aim at the effect of emotions or personal involvement, without taking into account their interaction. However, they always occur simultaneously in daily life. This study not only has such theoretical significance as verifying the results of previous studies, providing new empirical supports for related theories, exploring combined effects of emotional arousal and personal involvement on moral judgment and improving the data utilization rate of MJT, but also has the practical significance of providing basis to dealing with moral events.In this study,3*2 randomized experimental design is employed with MJT as the main research tool and 287 people from different backgrounds as participants to study the influence of aroused pleasure and disgust and personal involvement on ability or emotion of personal moral judgment. Here are findings:(1) Emotional arousal has a significant effect on the ability of moral judgment, participants' ability of moral judgment being totally different in various types of emotional arousal. It reaches the highest point in pleasure, and bottoms out in disgust;(2) Participants'attitude of moral judgment is only slightly affected by emotional arousal, there being no difference in moral judgment standard in different types pf emotional arousal;(3) Personal involvement has no obvious impact on the ability and attitude of participants' moral judgment;(4) Education level and work experience have significant effects on the participants'moral judgment. The higher their education level is, the higher standard of their moral judgment is. The longer work experience is, the lower ability and attitude of moral judgment become.