Who Keeps Company With The Wolf Will Learn To Howl:the Impact Of Moral Contagion On Pro-social Behavior

With the development of human civilization and the progress of the society,people are more focus on pro-social behavior and helping behavior.And the effect of moral and cognitive on pro-social behavior also has a growing number of studies.The existing research mainly introduced the influence mechanism of moral contagion on moral judgment and moral behavior from the negative aspect,and the conclusion was that immoral contagion would make the individual do more severe moral judgment.And immoral contagion affected the severity of moral judgments through the disgust.What more,there were no more studies of moral contagion or moral transmission from the positive aspects of moral domain.Thus,in body recognition framework,this paper examined the effects of positive moral contagion on helping behavior of the individuals.This study had two experiments.Experiment one discussed that whether the nature of moral contagion in human-to-human transmission was existed and also could affect individual's pro-social behavior under different kinds of ways of moral contagion.We let subjects wear t-shirts which were worn by moral people.What's more,we used the task of asking for help to verify that.The ways of moral contagion included imagine and contact.Experiment two discussed that whether the two different ways of moral contagion in human-to-human would influence the pro-social behavior through moral emotions,such as empathy and guilt.We let subjects wear caps which were worn by moral people.Also we used the charity mission to verify this results.The results showed that:(1)The experimental group which was dressed by ethical clothing(also called contact initiation group)could effectively initiate the level of moral contagion and more pro-social behavior compared with control group.(2)The experimental group which imaged wearing ethical clothing(also called imaging initiation group)could effectively initiate the level of moral contagion and more pro-social behavior compared with control group.(3)In contact group,there was no significant difference between men's and women in the aspect of moral contagion and pro-social behavior.In the imaging group,there was no significant difference between men's and women in the aspect of moral contagion,but there was a significant gender difference in pro-social behavior.(4)Under different initiation conditions,there was no significant difference in the degree of moral contagion between the contact group and the imaging group,but there was a significant difference in pro-social behavior.Imaging group showed more pro-social behavior than the contact group.(5)Under contact conditions,there was a significant difference in empathy between the contact group and the control group,but there was no significant difference in guilt emotion.Contact initiation group showed a higher level of empathy compared with control group.(6)Under contact conditions,empathy played a partial intermediary role between moral contagion and pro-social behavior.But guilt's intermediary effect was not significant.(7)Under imagined conditions,there was a significant difference in empathy between the imaging group and the control group,but there was no significant difference in guilt emotion.Imaging initiation group showed a higher level of empathy compared with control group.(8)Under imagined conditions,empathy played a full intermediary role between moral contagion and pro-social behavior.But guilt's intermediary effect was not significant.