Research On The Color Metaphor Of Moral Concepts In Thailand

Morality is an inherent criterion to judge whether people's behavior is right or not.It is also an ideology,which in psychological field,including three aspects: moral cognition,moral emotion,and moral behavior.Metaphor is essentially the process to understand abstract and unfamiliar concepts with the help of things and concepts we are familiar with every day.Under the former research on various dimensions in the field of morality metaphors,it still lack of cross-cultural research on the color metaphor theory of moral concepts.This research explores the color metaphor of moral concepts in Thailand from the perspective of embodied cognition and conceptual metaphor theory.Study 1 is inspired by the interview process on the moral dilemma of Shweder.The interview method is to figure it out the connection between moral concepts and specific color words in Thailand.It shows that in Thai people's minds,the representative color of moral and positive is yellow,in opposite;the symbol of immoral and negative color is black.Study 2 follows Study 1.It is a verification of the existence of black and yellow metaphors of moral concepts in Thailand.Experiment 1utilizes the Stroop paradigm,and the subjects are asked to judge the moral valence of the words which randomly displayed on the screen,then respond to the corresponding key presses as required.It shows that there is a metaphorical connection between moral concepts and black and yellow colors in Thailand.Experiment 2 changes the precondition that the subject can slow down the judgment process and focus on the accuracy compared to Experiment 1.It was found that the main effect of the moral effect is higher than that of Experiment 1.This shows that when the subject is given enough time,so they can fully mobilize the cognitive resources,the metaphor between moral valence and black-yellow color is more prominent.Experiment 3 adds a minimum limitation reaction time of 1500 ms.If the subject does not respond within the prescribed time limit,a punitive word like appears on the screen to urge the subject to make a quick reaction,at the same time the experiment skips to the next trail.It shows that the main effect of the moral effect was significantly lower than that of Experiment 1,and the interaction was not significant.This shows that the black and yellow metaphorical connection of the moralconcept is a special connection under certain cultural factors.This metaphorical connection is disturbed and not fully reflected in Experiment 3 after triggered the subjects' anxiety.Experiment 4 requires that the participants should determine the front color of the presented words quickly and accurately while the stimuli words are presented.It shows that the metaphor of black and yellow colors of moral concepts had two-way partial influence.According to Study 1 and Study 2,this research draws the following conclusions: there is the black-yellow color metaphor of moral concepts in Thailand,which can be elaborated as " yellow is moral,black is immoral ";The metaphor of moral concept and black-yellow color shows partial bidirectionality in the mapping direction,that is,the black-yellow color will affect the judgment of the participants' moral concepts;on the contrary,the moral concepts will have a partial influence on the judgment of the black-yellow color.