The Effect Of Watching Eyes On Moral Hypocrisy

Whether people's moral views and behaviors are consistent in private and public places is a matter worthy of our consideration.Haley and Fessl(2005)used the watching eyes as a clue of social surveillance to study the influence of the watching eyes on generosity and propose a reputation mechanism.They believed that the increase of generosity under the watching eyes was caused by people's attention to reputation.In the study,Bateson et al.(2013)observed a normative effect(norm psychology)-the motivation of the watching eyes to make people behave more pro-social and independent of local social norms,that is to say,real-world interventions based on the watching eyes can be effective in the current non-normative pro-social environment as well as in the current non-normative environment.Bourrat et al.(2011)firstly introduced the the watching eyes effect into the moral category,and proposed that the watching eyes enhances the harshness of moral judgment and supports the reputation mechanism.At the same time,many studies have not found about the watching eyes effect,and can not repeat the previous experimental results(Northover et al.,2017).In order to explore the relationship between the watching eyes and individual moral viewpoints and behaviors,this study examines the influence of the watching eyes on moral hypocrisy from two levels of moral hypocrisy(interpersonal relationship level and individual level).Since many previous replication studies could not successfully replicate the previous experimental results,Experiment 1 first replicated one of the previous studies.We assume that priming watching eye picture increases the severity of moral judgment.The results showed that the subjects' moral judgment scores of others were significantly higher than that of themselves under the condition of priming watching eye picture.We found in Experiment 1that moral judgment materials are anti-social moral dilemma stories.Wark and Krebs(1996)believed that people would make different moral judgments on different types of moral dilemma stories.In experiment 2,we took the type of moral dilemma stories as a variable and assumed that the influence of the watching eyes on moral judgment was influenced by the type of moral dilemma stories.The results showed that the subjects' moral judgment wasinfluenced by the types of moral dilemma stories under different conditions.Experiments 1and 2 mainly examined the influence of the watching eyes on moral hypocrisy in interpersonal relationship level,while Experiment 3 examined the influence of the watching eyes on moral hypocrisy in individual level.We hypothesize that priming watching eye picture can inhibit moral hypocrisy at the individual level.The results showed that the attitudes of the subjects were not significantly affected by the priming conditions,but the behaviors of the subjects were significantly affected by the priming conditions.The watching eye priming inhibited the moral hypocrisy at the individual level.This study attempts to explore the effects of priming conditions(priming watching eye picture and priming neutral picture)on moral hypocrisy at the interpersonal level and individual level,and the effects of actors on moral hypocrisy at the interpersonal level.Based on the above research,we conclude that:1.People's moral judgment of moral hypocrisy at the level of interpersonal relationship will be influenced by the subject of behavior and the type of moral dilemma story.2.Under the influence of the watching eye,for anti-social moral dilemma stories and pro-social moral dilemma stories,the judgement score of the subjects is lower than that of others,and the phenomenon of moral hypocrisy reversal appears.3.Compared with priming neutral picture group,priming watching eye picture group tended to make moral behavior,that is to say,the watching eyes makes people's behavior more pro-social.