The Effects Of Sweet And Bitter Taste On Moral Judgement

Morality is one of the social norms that guarantee the harmony and order of human society,which serves as an important guide for our daily lives.Prior research has revealed that sweetness may metaphorically influence social judgements and behaviors(interpersonal 'sweetness'),and while tasting the bitter food,the judgment of unethical behavior will be more severe.That is to say,this sensory metaphor that shapes social cognition may exist in the gustatory,and will change the individual,s current decision-making concept,thus affecting the individual's judgment in interpersonal or moral.In the end,this study designed three experiments to examine the effects of sweet/bitter taste on the judgment of moral/immoral events.Experiment 1 used the Implicit Association Test Task(IAT)to examine the response time difference of participants in joint mission consisting of sweet vocabulary and moral vocabulary or consisting of bitter vocabulary and unethical vocabulary.It was found that participants were more inclined to associate sweetness with morality than the connection between bitterness and morality.Experiment 2 used the form of picture priming to manipulate the sweetness and bitterness of the participants,and examined the differences of the scores and response time in the moral judgment tasks under the two manipulation conditions.The results show that under the imaginary sweet feeling conditions,the participants are aroused their moral concepts,which made the evaluation of unethical events more severe.While under the bitter conditions,participants are elicited immoral concepts to bring about a higher evaluation of moral events.Experiment 3 used the form of true taste priming effects to manipulate the sweetness and bitterness of the partieipants,and examined the scores and response time of theirs.in the moral judgment task.The results showed that participants under sweet taste had a higher preference for taste perception,which made the evaluation of moral events higher.However,participants with bitter taste had higher emotional disgust to taste perception,and thus the evaluation of unethical events is more harshness.Based on the above three experiments,this study draws the conclusion that there is a metaphorical link between sweetness/bittemess and morality/immorality,which is expressed as the implicit relationship of "sweet-moral,bitter-immoral".In the imaginary experience,individuals are more likely to be affected by this metaphor;while in the real experience,individuals are more likely to be influenced by emotions or preferences,thus showing sweetness promoting moral friendliness and bitterness leading to moral harshness.