Moral Judgment In Movement: The Influence Of Locomotion Mode

People’s moral judgment or moral behavior is often dependent on a specific situation,even the subtle situation or the change of individual differences may affect people’s moral judgment.So,does an individual’s exercise status also affect people’s moral judgment? In fact,when people encounter moral situations in real life situations,they are often in motion.However,most of the previous studies on moral judgment asked the subjects to sit down to answer the questions,so the external validity of the studies was not high.In this paper,the low-intensity movement of walking was taken as the movement group,and the standing without moving was taken as the stationary group,so as to investigate the moral judgment of people in movement compared with the stationary group.If movement affects people’s moral judgments,then why does exercise affect their moral judgments? Since any particular motion is the result of an implied goal(Levinger,1957;Kruglanski et al.,2013).Therefore,from the perspective of motivation,based on Regulatory mode theory,this paper examines the role of people’s locomotion mode in the influence of movement on moral judgment.In this paper,moral dilemmas will be used to examine people’s moral judgments under the state of motion(movement vs.static).Moral dilemmas are often used to examine the reasons behind people’s moral judgments.such as the classic trolley dilemma,where people are forced to choose whether to press the switch "sacrifice one person to save five people",that is,one choice is to agree with the utilitarian judgment of the harm behavior that promotes the maximum result,and the other choice is not to accept the deontological judgment of the harm behavior that presses the switch no matter what the result is.Moreover,previous studies have shown that people differ in their performance in different types of moral dilemmas(Greene et al.,2001).Therefore,considering the universality,the text will examine the influence of movement on moral judgment under two kinds of moral dilemmas: personal dilemma and impersonal dilemma.There are three experiments in this paper.In experiment 1,this paper preliminarily explores the individual’s moral judgment on different types of moral dilemmas(personal and impersonal dilemmas)in state of motion.The main task was to explore Whether the state of motion(movement vs.static)influences people to make utilitarian or deontological judgments.In experiment 2,we explored the influence of people’s motivation mode(locomotion and assessment)on moral judgment,and examined the relationship between the regulatory mode theory and moral judgment.In experiment 3,the effect of motion state(movement vs.static)on moral judgment is examined in moral dilemmas that do not involve individual interests,and join the investigation of locomotion mode.On the one hand,this can verify the stability of experiment 1 and experiment 2 results;on the other hand,it can explore whether walking movement way can effectively induce people’s locomotion mode motivation,and investigate the mediating role of locomotion mode in the influence of motion states(movement vs.static)on moral judgments.The results show that:(1)Motion status affects people’s moral judgment.Compared with the static condition,individuals in the movement condition are more inclined to make utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas.(2)Motivational mode affects people’s moral judgments.Individuals with higher motivation of locomotion mode are more inclined to make utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas.(3)Motion status can affect people’s motivation to locomotion.Compared with the static condition,the individuals in the movement condition have a higher level of locomotion mode.(4)Locomotion mode plays a mediating role in the influence of motion status on moral judgment.