The Black-white Metaphor Of Integrity And Its Influence On The Attitude To Integrity

Not only in western countries but also in China,people often connect white with goodness as well as connect black with badness.Such connection of black-white to moral concept can be seen in many adages,such as “white person” is used to describe someone who is clean and honest.According to concept metaphor theory,conceptual metaphor is defined as a mapping of associative links between corresponding elements of dissimilar concepts.Researches of moral during the metaphor theory view have proved the connection of black-white with moral.While integrity as an important part of moral,we are going to explore the connection between integrity and black-white.According to Chinese traditional culture,the concept of integrity include two dimensions : “honesty” and ”trustworthiness”.Moreover,several researches about the trait of integrity have explored the structure of integrity in Chinese culture.Therefore we will carry out our study in two dimensions to explore the influence of black-white metaphor to both honesty and trustworthiness.Both of the experiments were one factor within-subject design.We recruited 65 individuals to join our study,and the task presentation realized by E-prime 1.1.In the first part of our study,the relationship between black-white color and implicit attitude to integrity is discussed.In experiment 1 we used unknown words translation paradigm to study the relation between the black and white color and the implicit attitude of honesty.In order to eliminate the participants may categorize the unknown words according to the mood of black and white color,so we used of words the stroop paradigm in experiment2 to verify again whether there is a metaphorical connection between black and white color with the concept of good faith.The results of twoexperiments,participants were more inclined to match white with integrity words,and black with dishonest words.Further more,when honest words appeared on a white background and dishonest words appeared on the black background,the reaction time is significantly shorter than the honest words appeared on a black background and dishonest words appeared on a white background.The two studies showed that there was a metaphorical connection between black-white color and the implicit attitude of integrity.In the second part of the study,(experiment 3),we discussed the relationship between black-white color and the explicit attitude of integrity.The honest and dishonest stories were presented in the white and black background respectively.The participants were asked to judge the degree of integrity.The results showed that even the same story was presented in the white and black background,the degree of integrity was different.Compared with the black background,when the stories were presented on the white background,the particiants tend to judge the protagonist to be more honest and more tolerant to dishonest behaviors.This part of research also proved the effect of black and white color on the attitude of honesty.The third part discussesed the influence of black and white background color on honesty and trustworthiness.In study 4,we adapted the deception game developed by Gneezy,to ask the participants to finish the information send-receive task as an information-sender.In the task participants should decide whether to send their counterpart a truthful or deceptive message.These messages were presented on black or white background randomly.The number of truthful message sent by participants was recorded during the experiment.In study 5,We modified the trust-game task.In this task participants should judge how much money will the trustee give back to the investor as a spectator.Similar as study 4,the tasks were presented on black or white background randomly.And we would record the number of times that participants think the trustee would give more money back to the investor than the initial investment.The results of study 4 showed that,when the tasks were presented on white background,participants will choose to send more truthful messages than presented on blackbackground.The difference is significant,p=.041.The results of study 5 showed that compared to black background,when the tasks presented on white background,participants tend to think the trustee will give more than the initial investment back to the investor,p=.003.All together,we proved the connection between integrity and the color of black and white,the color of the background can influence both of the honest behavior and trustworthy behavior.So we can see there is a psychological reality of“integrity is white,bad faith is black”.Such a color representation of integrity concepts exists at the behavior level.Based on the three studies,we can get the following conclusions:(1)There is a metaphorical connection between integrity and the color of black and white.Individuals tend to associate white with integrity,and black and dishonest.(2)Black and white color could influence the individual's judgment on the integrity of others' behaviors,and white promotes the tolerance of individuals to others.(3)Black and white color can not only influence the attitude of individual integrity,but also have certain influence on the integrity behavior.Black will inhibit the integrity behavior of individuals.