The “Light” And “Dark” Metaphorical Representation Of The Moral Concept Of The Vagrant Minors And Its Influence On Moral Judgment

Through combing the relevant theories and research of moral conceptual metaphor and the morals of vagrant minors,this study finds that,the light and dark dimensions of moral conceptual metaphor have not yet been studied on the psychological reality and difference of the group of vagrant minors with moral problems,and whether the interference effect of embodied perception on moral category is metaphorical consistency or metaphorical compensation needs to be further verified.Based on this,three studies were conducted to explore the existence of moral conceptual metaphor,its representation and mapping intensity,and its disturbing effect on moral judgment.Study 1 and 2 performed experimental procedures in Eprime2.0 and Study 3 performed behavioral experiments in a specific environment.The first study used the Stroop paradigm in a mixed experiment with 2(subjects: Vagrant Minors and non-vagrant Minors)× 2(Font Brightness: light,dark)× 2(vocabulary types: moral words and immoral words),the vagrant and non-vagrant minors were asked to make lexical judgments about moral or immoral words presented in gray(light)and dark gray(dark)brightness.Further analysis showed that the reaction time of bright moral words was significantly faster than that of bright immoral words,dark immoral words was significantly faster than that of dark moral words.Among them,the vagrant minors were significantly slower than the non-vagrant minors under the conditions of consistency and inconsistency,as well as the overall reaction time.The second study used the color block start-up paradigm in a mixed experiment with 2(subjects: Vagrant Minors and non-vagrant Minors)× 2(starting block luminance: light,dark)× 2(vocabulary types: moral words and immoral words),the vagrant and non-vagrant minors were asked to make part-of-speech judgments of moral or immoral words after the light and dark blocks are activated.It was found that the response time of moral words was significantly faster than that of immoral words after the condition of light-colored blocks,and that the response time of immoral words after the condition of dark-colored blocks was significantly faster than that of moral words.The reaction time of vagrant minors was slower than that of non-vagrant minors under the same stimulus and representation direction.In the third study,behavioral experiments with 2(type of subjects: Vagrant Minors,non-vagrant minors)× 2(ambient brightness: light and dark)were carried out with the changing situation paradigm.In the light or dark environments,the vagrant and non-vagrant minors were asked to make level 1-7 moral judgments about the behaviors of the protagonist in each of the six dilemma stories.The higher the score,the more ethical the judgment.The results show that the interference effect of vagrant and non-vagrant minors is metaphor consistency effects.That is,they judge morality more harshly in the dark environment and more leniently in the bright environment.In bright environment,vagrant minors perceived other people’s behavior as more moral.And there was no significant difference between the vagrant and non-vagrant minors in moral judgment scores in dark environment.Here’s the verdict.First,both vagrant and non-vagrant minors have metaphors of moral concepts,namely,"brightness is good and darkness is bad",that is,brightness is moral,darkness is immoral.Second,both of them have the embodied effect from "light and dark" to the moral category,and the concrete perception of the light and dark has the consistency effect of metaphorical deviation to the moral judgment.Third,the implicit metaphor of the moral concept of the vagrant minors under unconscious condition is called "light-morality" and "dark-immorality" is weaker than that of non-vagrant minors,Finally,the mapping of "light-morality" of the vagrant minors is stronger under conscious conditions.This provides a reference for the further study of moral conceptual metaphor.