The Effects Of Sworn Gesture On Judgment And Prediction Of Others' Moral Behavior:From The Perspective Of Embodiment

As a rising star in the study of cognition,embodied cognition theory has attracted more attention in the field of cognitive science at home and abroad.In the last few years Embodied Morality has attracted much interest as a new frontier of moral study.Existing research shows that specific body posture will affect their own moral decisions,but there is little research in this field on whether individual after making some kind of body posture will also affect evaluation and prediction of moral behavior toward others.Therefore,this study aims to explore the impact of a certain body pose on assessment and prediction of others' moral behavior.In the Chinese culture,vow exists in people's daily life and work.In this study,sworn gesture is selected as an embodied clue to explore the influence of posture to moral evaluation and prediction in moral situations about the oath or no oath.Otherwise,this study will explore the mediation role of the mood in the influence of body posture for predicting their moral behaviorA 3(body posture: sworn posture;non-sworn posture and no-posture)×2(moral context: have “oath” vs.have no “oath”)between-group design was adopted in Experiment 1 to explore that the influence of the "sworn" posture on the evaluation of others' moral behavior.Experiment 2 used a mixed-design,specifically,2(body posture: sworn posture;non-sworn posture)× 2(moral context: Oath scene and no-oath scene).Body posture is a between variable,and moral context is internal variable.This study further explores the influence of the "sworn" posture to predict the behavior of others and emotional intermediary role.The subjects who were asked to make corresponding body postures in both experiments.After that,the subjects were asked to evaluate the behavior of the protagonist in the moral dilemma in the experiment 1,and in the experiment 2 the motions is measured after the body posture,and the subjects were asked to predict the behavior of the protagonist in the moral dilemma.The results showed that:(1)Participants who make the sworn posture evaluate others ' behavior more strict than who make the non-sworn positions.(2)Participants who make the sworn posture predict others' behavior more in line with moral rule than who make the non-sworn posture,however,the predicting other' s moral behavior do not affected by the sworn posture which participants who make.(3)The sense of justice and loyalty may play a meditation role in the process of predicting other' s moral behavior.The results confirmed that the influence of the "sworn" posture to assessment and prediction to other' s moral behavior,expanded embodied moral studies,and enrich the results of the study which based on the theory of embodied moral in Chinese culture.And in order to further research the effect of body posture on moral cognition provides reference.