The Vertical Spatial Metaphor Of Moral Concepts And Bidirectional Mapping Of Physical Disabilities

With the emphasis on embodied cognition,body,action and the interaction with the external environment interact with each other.Metaphor as a method of explaining embodied cognition,its cognitive function is gradually being explored by people and the research direction is extended to morality field.Morality explored the important role of personal physical experience in moral cognition,moral emotion and moral behavior.Physical experience determines the development and change of individual moral psychology.Because physical disabilities is impaired,physical experience is imperfect.There is a limit to the exploration of space.According to the theory of embodied morality,the moral metaphor of the physically handicapped person is determined by their physical spatial experience.The study explores the metaphorical representation of the moral concept of vertical disability of physical disabilities and demonstrates the two-way relationship between moral spatial metaphor and physical spatial experience.Study 1 explores the characteristics of vertical spatial metaphor at the conscious level in the concept of moral disability through the conscious classification of moral vocabulary.The study selected 23 participants with physical disabilities to complete a vocabulary classification paper-pencil test.Using Chi-Square test to analyse to found that the number of moral words placed above the cartoon character was significantly more than the number of moral words placed under the cartoon character,and the number of immoral words placed under the cartoon character was significantly higher than the number of immoral words placed above the cartoon character.Study 2 used the Spatial Stroop Paradigm to explore the characteristics of vertical spatial metaphor in the unconscious level and its comparative characteristics with the moral metaphor of healthy people.The study selected 15 physically handicapped person and 20 able-bodied person to complete the experimental procedure.The results of repeated measures of variance analysis found that the interaction between the word type and the vertical spatial orientation of the physically disabled was significant;the types of words,the vertical spatial orientation and the differences between the groups were also significant.The reaction time of moral words above and immoral words under are all longer than healthy people.Study 3 explored the influnce of vertical space on moral metaphor through priming the vertical space picture.The study selected 24 person with disabilities to complete the experiment procedure.Using the repeated measures of variance analysis,it was found that the interaction effects between starting conditions and vocabulary types were significant,and the reaction time of the subjects on moral words was significantly faster than that of immoral words.The interaction between the starting condition and the vertical spatial orientation was significant,and the participants' reaction time to judge vocabulary above was significantly faster than the judgment on vocabulary below.However,stating condition,word type and vertical spatial orientation interact not significantly.Based on the above studies,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The moral concept of vertical spatial metaphor on physical disabilities is characterized by "morality is up,immorality is down".That is,there is an intrinsic link between morality and vertical space and the realization of the conceptual mapping of moral concepts towards vertical space.(2)The moral metaphor of physically handicapped and able-bodied people had the same characteristics of implicit characterization,but the metaphorical connection of physically disabled persons is obviously weaker than that of healthy people.(3)The initiation of spatial images can facilitate the understanding of moral words.At the same time,it can arouse people's perception of vertical space and prove the mapping of spatial concept to moral concepts.There is a two-way relationship between moral spatial metaphor mapping.