The Effect Of Interpretation Level On General Moral Judgment And Its Mechanism

Resently,the problem of moral judgment has been one of the hot topics of researchers.As a relatively new and rapidly developing theory of mental representation,Construal Level Theory has been applied to the interpretation and research of moral judgment and moral evaluation since 2008.The core point is that,due to the differences in pictorial and abstract levels in the cognitive processing of things,individual mental representations can be divided into two different levels of interpretation,namely high and low construal level.individuals in high construal level focus on the core features of things and obtain abstract representational results.Individuals in high construal level focus on the secondary and non-critical features of things to obtain specific representational results.Since then,researchers at home and abroad have done a lot of research on moral judgment based on Construal Level Theory.At present,the research conclusion of moral judgment of dilemma is consistent.However,due to the inconsistency of the research conclusions,researchers have not yet achieved a consensus on the direction of the role of high and low levels of construal in general moral judgment.Based on the Construal Level Theory,the aims of this study were to explore the relationship between construal level and general moral judgment,and provide explanations for the contradictory conclusions in previous studies.In this study,6 self-compiled stories were used as experimental materials.Two other variables,namely,thinking time and priming mode,were introduced.E-prime2.0 program was used to control variables and present materials.This study consisted of two experiments.The influence of construal level on individual moral judgment under different thinking time was examined in the experiment 1.120 university students in Nanjing were selected as subjects,and the word generation task was used to activate the subjects' high and low construal level.Afterwards,E-prime2.0 was used to control the length of time for the subjects to think,realize the presentation of self-edited experimental materials and record the subjects' response to the buttons.Conclusions of the experiment are as follows:(1)In the long time of thinking,compared with individuals at the low level of construal,the moral judgment of the individuals at the high level of construal was more severe.(2)In the short time of thinking,compared with individuals at the high level of construal,the moral judgment of the individuals at the low level of construal was more severe.(3)Thinking time played a regulating role in the influence of construal level on individual moral judgment.In other words,under different thinking time,the severity degree of moral judgment of individuals with high and low construal level was completely opposite.The influence of construal level on individual moral judgment under different priming modes was explored in the experiment 2.106 university students in Nanjing were selected as subjects.Word generation task was used to directly activate the construal level of the subjects of the direct priming group.Through language expression,the psychological distance between the subjects and the story situation was adjusted to achieve the manipulation of the construal level of the indirect priming group.Afterwards,E-prime2.0 was used to present the self-edited experimental materials and record the subjects' keypad reactions.Conclusions of the experiment are as follows:(1)When accepting the indirect priming,compared with the individuals at the low level of explanation,the moral judgment of the individuals at the high level of construal was more severe.(2)When receiving the direct priming,compared with the individuals at the high level of construal,the moral judgment of the individuals at the low level of construal was more severe.(3)Priming mode played a regulating role in the influence of construal level on individual moral judgment.In other words,the severity of moral judgment of individuals with high and low construal levels was completely different when different priming modes were used.