An Experimental Study On Moral Judgment Of College Students In A Dilemma

In the study of moral judgment,the researchers put forward a lot of theories about the mechanism of moral judgment.The focus of the debate is whether moral judgment is dominated by emotion or by cognition.There are mainly three theories in this area.The first one is the rational theory,represented by Piaget and Kohlberg,that is,moral judgment is based on rational reasoning.The second one is Jonathan Hite’s intuition theory.He believes that moral judgment is mainly based on emotional intuition,such as "moral Soundlessness".The third one is dual processing theory,represented by Grenada.He believes that moral judgment is a process in which cognition and emotion work together.This study is based on the mechanism of cognition and emotion in moral judgment.The dilemma is taken as the main research material.Two experiments were designed to understand the difference of moral judgment between the students who are in the dilemma when the cognitive resources are occupied or not and the emotion are evoked or not.Both experiments used a two-factor mixed design of 2(group)× 3(context type),randomly selected 248 college students,and assigned124 subjects in each experiment randomly.Then,62 subjects were randomly assigned to each group.Take the reaction time and the judgment result "Yes"(F)or "No"(J)as the index to collect data and compare them.The first experiment is to understand the influence and difference of the moral judgments of college students in different types of dilemma without emotion induction when cognitive resources were occupied or not.The second experiment is to understand the influence and difference of the moral judgments of college students in different types of dilemma under emotion induction when cognitive resources were occupied or not.According to the relevant data analysis,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)In the absence of emotional induction,the occupation of cognitive resources will significantly increase the time for moral judgment of college students in the dilemma of high personal involvement.(2)In the absence of emotional induction,regardless of the occupation of cognitive resources,the reaction time of the high personal involvement dilemma is significantly longer than the other two types.(3)In the absence of emotional induction,regardless of whether the cognitive resourcesare occupied or not,the moral judgment results of the three situations are significantly different.(4)In the emotional induction,regardless of whether the cognitive resources are occupied or not,the moral judgment results of the three situation types are significantly different.(5)When cognitive resources are occupied,the induction of emotions will significantly affect the moral judgment results of college students in the context of low involvement.(6)When cognitive resources are not occupied,the induction of emotions will significantly affect the reaction time of moral judgments in the three situations of college students.And the difference in reaction time is more significant in the context of high personal involvement.