Research On The Relationship Between Awe And Moral Judgment Of College Students

As a kind of positive emotion,the awe has two characteristics of idiosyncrasy and state.There is a close relationship between awe and pro-social behavior,information processing and self consciousness.With the deep study of the moral psychology of the scholars,people find that emotion plays a very important role in moral judgment in addition to cognitive reasoning.However,the current research is mainly focused on the influence of emotional titers and negative emotional types on moral judgment,and there is a relative lack of research on the awe which is closely related to moral psychology.Therefore,in order to make up for the lack of current research,this study examined the relationship between awe emotion and moral judgment.The study included two parts:In the first study,330 students from a University in Xuzhou were selected to finish the MJT and AES.The relationship between their idiosyncratic awe and their moral judgement ability was investigated.In study two,3 subjects were randomly selected from 3 subjects:(state:awe,happiness,control),2(self involvement:self-related and non-self-related),and the moral judgment test(Chinese version)was used as the main research tool.The effects of state awe and happiness and Self Involvement on moral judgment were investigated from 180 college students from a University in Nanjing.The study found that:(1)College students' idiosyncratic awe was not significantly different in sex,but there was a significant difference in grades.The scores of the AES in postgraduates were significantly higher than those in the lower grades and undergraduate grades.(2)There was a significant positive correlation between idiosyncratic awe and moral judgment ability of college students.The scores of moral judgment ability of the high level trait awe group were significantly higher than the low level idiosyncratic awe group.(3)The score of the moral judgment ability of the state awe group was significantly higher than that of the control group,but there was no significant difference between the subjects and the happy emotional arousal group.The influence of Self Involvement on College Students' moral judgment ability and moral affective tendency is not significant.(4)college students generally had a higher stage of moral development preference(that is moral emotional inclination).The moral development stage preference of the emotional evoking group was significantly higher than that of the control group,but there was no significant difference between the subjects and the subjects of the happy emotional arousal group.It could be seen that both idiosyncratic awe and state awe had a certain influence on the moral judgment of college students.The moral judgement ability of high level idiosyncratic awe was higher than that of low level state awe.The induction of state awe could significantly improve the moral judgment ability of college students and the preference of the stage of moral development.