The Influence Of Punishment On Moral Hypocrisy In College Students

Moral hypocrisy(MH)is the motivation to appear moral yet,if possible,avoid the cost of actually behaving morally(Batson,2008).Punishment refers to a process in which a disgusting stimulus/unpleasant event was presented after certain behaviors with the purpose of eliminating or suppressing those behaviors.Durkheim argues that the idea of punishment is to show the feasibility and power of moral orders by means of censuring violators,convey moral feelings and moral information,and foster people's moral sense(Emil Durkheim,2006;Hu Shuijun,2009).Through three studies,this experiment proves that punishment did not reduce the individual's moral hypocrisy neither as threat or feedback,however,it actually increased participants' moral hypocrisy.Study 1 aimed to understand the effect of punishment as a threat on the moral hypocrisy in the process of individual distribution and role of moral deduction in the occurrence of moral hypocrisy.Study 2 aimed to study the impact of groups of which punishments come from and the knowledge of the distributional process to others on the appearance of moral hypocrisy.Study 3 was designed to understand how punishment influences the behaviors of moral hypocrisy when it acts as tangible feedback instead of potential threats.With the above three studies,the conclusions are:(1)As a threat,punishment significantly increased moral hypocrisy.Punishment comes from the recipient or the third party has no effect on moral hypocrisy.Whether the results of distribution were observed had no effect on moral hypocrisy.In the case of punishment,when the distribution were observed,the participant's moral hypocrisy increased.(2)When punishment exists,a significant correlation between the transfer of responsibility,the dispersion of responsibility and the distortion result and moral hypocrisy were observed.In the absence of punishment,there is a significant correlation between moral deduction and moral hypocrisy.(3)Participants' attitude toward their unethical behavior shows a tolerant attitude;Whether it could be observed or hypocritical there is a significant difference in the fairness of the participants' behavior;The source of the punishment and the distribution result have an interaction with the impact of the fair evaluation.(4)In the real game scenario,punishment made the individual more and more hypocritical in the distribution.Individual emotions did not play a role.