Psychological Distance Affect Moral Judgement

People not only can directly experience the moment,also can sense the past,predict the future,imagine other places,understand other people's thoughts,predict the likelihood of time,therefore,memory,plan,prediction,imagination,hope,balancing possibility make up our minds,and affect people's emotion,and guide people's choices and actions.Psychological distance has four dimensions,they are time distance,social distance,spatial distance and possibility,each dimension has two levels,namely the low level and high level of constral.Moral judgment itself has characteristics is balancing and making decisions between the deontological thinking and utilitarian thinking.The base of deontological thinking is the abstract moral law,the base of utilitarian thinking is the specific utility as a result.the moral law is more abstract and summed up the general rules,the specific results of utilitarianism is associated with the actual situation,so it can be concluded that,when people form the high construal level tend to be from the perspective of moral law to make moral judgments,and when people form low construal level tend to make a moral judgment from the perspective of specific situation.Interaction of psychological distance's four dimensions of can be formed the different construal levels,this study is based on the interaction of time distance and social distance in moral judgment,to explore the construal level under two dimensions of psychological distance,and further on the impact of moral judgment.First study: using 2(time distance:near far)x 2(social distance,near far)within the subjects of design,with the experimental material of modified Liberman's experimental material,this study is going to explore the moral judgment under interaction of time distance and social distance.The results found that when time distance is near and social distance is near,people tend to have low construal level and have relatively tolerant for violation of the code of ethics.Among three condition of the high construal level,namely far time distance and near social distance,near time distance and far social distance,far time distance and far social distance,moral judgment is no significant,comparing between two construal level moral judgment is significant.Second study:using 2(time distance: near far)2 x(social distance: near far)within subjects design,with the moral judgment questionnaire compiled byYang Qingsong(2013)as experiment material,to explore when time distance and social distance commonly work the moral judgment under positive situation and negative situations.This study is based on the first study,and further explore.Some researchers think that the experiment material is out of the life,and foreign experimental material is not necessarily apply to the Chinese,what is more,the moral judgment is maybe different under positive situation and negative situation.Therefore,this research adopts university campus eventswhich the college students always can touch as experiment material,and explores under positive situation and negative situation.Research results show that,whether positive or negative situation,subjects will make more positive moral evaluation under the high level of construal,and make more negative moral evaluationunder negative situation,three conditions of high construal levels is no significant difference,and whether it is positive or negative situation scenarios,no difference between the degree of the extent of the positive and negative.Third study: using 2(time distance: near far)x 2(social distance,near far)within the subjects of design,with questionnaire(2011)compiled by Shouli Shu et.al as experimental material,under moral dilemma situation explore moral judgment when time distance and social distance work together.Research results show that there is no significant difference between low and high construal level when time distance and social distance commonly work,but in the case of social distance is near,participants were more inclined to make selfish judgment,when social distance is far,the choice result is no difference.