The Role Of Moral Cognition And Moral Emotion In The Process Of Vertical Spatial Metaphor Of Moral Concepts

This study used moral words as experimental materials,explored the deep-level cognitive and processing mechanisms of vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts through three experiments.The moral concept mainly involves two aspects: moral valence and emotional valence,moral valence refers to moral cognition and emotional valence refers to moral emotion.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to explore moral cognition and moral emotion which play a leading role in the process of the vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts,or the two are inseparable,which together affect the metaphorical connection between moral concepts and vertical spaces.Experiment 1 used implicit association test paradigm(IAT)to investigate the role of moral cognition on the vertical representation of moral concepts,It is found that the connection strength between the words of high moral valence and vertical space is larger than that of low moral valence,Indicating that moral cognition helps to promote the understanding of vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts.Experiment 2 used moral words with different emotional valence as experimental material,also used IAT paradigm.The results show that the implicit connection strength of the high emotional valence words and the vertical spatial orientation is greater than the low emotional valence words.Indicating that emotional factors also play an important role in the process of vertical characterization of moral concepts.By comparing the results of experiment 1 and experiment 2,we found that emotional factors react faster than moral cognition,but the power of the connection strength is basically equal,there is no strong and weak.The purpose of the experiment 3 is to examine the combined effects of moral cognition and moral emotion in the vertical space metaphor of moral concepts.Using the same experimental method as Experiment 1 and 2,the results showed that the implicit connection strength between the words with high moral and emotional valence and vertical space is stronger than high moral valence words or high emotional valence words.Three experiments together: moral cognition and moral emotion play their respective role in the process of vertical spatial metaphor of moral concepts.And the role of forces are basically equal,commonly affected the metaphorical connection between moral concepts and vertical spaces.